TORONTO – At a press conference Toronto city councillors advised that the transformation of Toronto’s diverse neighbourhoods into a single grey monolith will be completed by 2025, instead of 2026 as projected.

“As you all know, for the past twenty years our main goal has been to gentrify and amalgamate every part of Toronto until previously unique neighbourhoods like Rexdale and the Danforth feel exactly the same,” said Mayor Tory. “And with the current rate of condo construction and faux hipster chain store openings, it looks like our work will be done even earlier than anticipated.”

“We’d like to give a shout out to market economics and residents’ tacit acceptance of this development for their help in completing the project,” he added.

The initiative started in 1994 as a way to improve city safety, but soon transformed into a much more ambitious project designed to ensure that residents, visitors and people watching Toronto stand in for New York City in movies feel exactly the same no matter which part of town they are in.

Previous Toronto planning initiatives including the LRT and downtown relief subway line were famously plagued by delays, something the government was determined to avoid with this project.

“Getting rid of Honest Ed’s was a great step, but obviously there is still a lot of work to be done,” said city planner Jennifer Keesmaat. “In the coming years we will be replacing Chinatown with a giant board game café and putting up Urban Outfitters all over Parkdale.”

Other major works include plans to fill in the Don Valley using concrete. However Toronto’s most unusual neighbourhood Kensington Market will be allowed to remain in place, but the entire block will be covered with a tarp to make it look like an Ikea to outsiders.

At press time the city was still finalizing plans for how it would cut the CN Tower down.