Vision Saint John is proud of its picturesque Victorian streetscapes and heritage buildings. The best example of this legacy is the Trinity Royal Heritage Preservation District.

But the city's architects, engineers, builders, realtors, planners, politicians and homeowners have never been satisfied with tradition. Modern architectural and planning ideas were evident by the early twentieth century. The 1946 master plan produced few immediate results, but repeated and expanded earlier calls for orderly growth, slum clearance, specialized land uses and social reform. It also identified how past industrial and transportation decisions, such as extensive railway lands near the waterfront, had affected the city's traffic patterns and aesthetic characteristics. The municipal and federal governments in the 1940s and 1950s supported public housing and veterans housing such as Rockwood Court, the Rifle Range and Portland Place, but decent, affordable housing remained in short supply. The optimism of post-war consumer society was epitomized by new subdivisions, based on owner-occupied single-family dwellings and the automobile.

The suburban developments required the preservation of municipal services, public transit and new schools. In the 1960s and early 1970s, urban renewal and highway construction was radically altering older neighbourhoods in the North end and the old East end. In the outlying areas, many families of modest means built their own houses, and developers constructed apartment buildings. By the time Saint John amalgamated with neighbouring municipalities in the late 1960s, the city's older tenement neighbourhoods and industrial and commercial districts were ringed by newer residential developments.