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If you could change one thing about Toronto, what would it be?

greenleaf

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I'll start. It's a close call. Adding a downtown relief line would be fantastic.

However, I think free public child care in the 416 would be a remarkable public policy decision.

Any other ideas?
 
Change the mayor of course. To me :p

To be serious... the DRL would be a great thing to do. Some higher density would be great too.

But if I could just magically change something though, I would get rid of the gangs and violence. Even though a true subway/RT network would be nice, it boils down to the worst thing in the City, and I believe that's violent crime/gang violence.
 
Just one?

Just one thing is hard. My list of 'big things' I'd like to change is probably in the dozens! I say that as someone born in Toronto and who quite likes it!

However, for purposes of this discussion, I will exclude any 'operating' change. Meaning things like library or rec center hours, user fees or social programs.

My logic is that most social programs are Provincial or Federal and could not be unilaterally changed in Toronto alone.

Moreover, even Toronto-centric changes of an operating nature are potentially quite transient and reversible from one gov't to the next.

So I will limit myself to infrastructure.

Given the need to pick only 1 thing, I would want something with the greatest possible impact.

If I must strictly go with 1, I will pick:

The Downtown Relief line, but if I can only have that, I want the deluxe version!

Eglinton and Don Mills to Adelaide, integrated with King and St. Andrew Subway Stations and looping up through Dundas West to Eglinton & Jane.
 
If I could change one thing, I would ask for a WISH that all the off the following things happen instantly.



- make almost all the major and minor downtown streets ONE WAY.

- sell booze in grocery stores

- open newspaper and magazine stands on the streets

- tear down a lot of Yonge Street south of Bloor and north of Queen.

- quadruple the amount of money spent on the parks

- sue the OMB

- built the DRL

- increase density

- open the subway 24 hours a day

- ban back lit neon signs

- tear down the Ferry Docks and replace with something magnificent instead of the shit situation down there now.
 
The one thing that I think would give the biggest long-term impact would be for Toronto (metropolitan Toronto) to become an independent province.


If we need to be more realistic than that, I'd settle for legalizing party affiliations in municipal elections.
 
expand the subway system and have it better integrated with surrounding public transit
 
In a SimCity way, I would want Toronto to be somewhere else. Ideally we would be located next to some kind of deep water port along some kind of major international shipping route. It would also be nice to have some interesting topography near by (i.e. mountains). Better seafood.
 
On a less impossible note, I wish the City had what I can only describe as "districts." By that I mean areas with commercial activities all over the place. As it is the city is composed of a series of retail and employment bands (like Yonge Street) which seem to stretch on ad infinatum surrounded within meters on either side by what is in most cases single family housing. Every city has some streets that are more residential or more commercial than others, but normally they usually have stuff going on streets other than the main arterial. There are a few examples in Toronto, like Kensington Market or Yorkville, that aren't strictly linear in orientation but they are the exception.

It just seems practical to me. If you take a peice of string and weave it into a mesh or jumble, the distance from any one point on the string to another will be less than if you stretch the string out into a line. Geographically speaking, most of the City is shielded from any significant development (be it retail, employment or residential) through various zoning restrictions, stable areas, industrial parks and such and we are forced into overbuilding on what we do have. Why would we ever build a 50 story condo at Yonge and Eglinton while, literally 2 or 3 blocks east, you have houses which might as well be in some small town. I don't oppose tall buildings or anything, but it just seems a bit ridiculous to throw up 30 story point towers on every parking lot that comes up in a development area when vast tracks of the city are single use, single family home enclaves.
 
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More attention to streetscapes and street-level retail in new developments and neighbourhoods. Why are the city's only vibrant areas the 100-year-old ones?
 
On a less impossible note, I wish the City had what I can only describe as "districts." By that I mean areas with commercial activities all over the place. As it is the city is composed of a series of retail and employment bands (like Yonge Street) which seem to stretch on ad infinatum surrounded within meters on either side by what is in most cases single family housing.

Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more on that. Toronto's connectivity of urban 'villages' is one of its best assets in my opinion...

As for me, I'd like to see a less grubby/shabby urban environment for the city: better-maintained public spaces; more public gardens/plantings and tree canopies along major thoroughfares; nicer streets, roads and street furniture; and the burial of hydro wires.... please!!!!!

Also, more subways is a no-brainer and a necessity. Time to hold our political leaders accountable for this.
 
second in pie..
good topic.. but besides what i would call random incidents, i wouldn't say we have a gang problem downtown. sure, in other areas, but the random DT incidents aren't what is hurting the DT IMO.

Mystic Point
have to disagree with one way streets.. they are killer to street life! see hamilton!
and the OMB.. if it wasn't for them, nothing in this city would get built!
but you're right.. the waterfront needs MAJOR public space improvements. not the hog pog of parkettes that TorontoWaterfront has come up with to date.

my wishlish..
more transit
mjor improvement to the waterfront
and that i see the west don lands stuff come to fruition in my life time.
 
Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more on that. Toronto's connectivity of urban 'villages' is one of its best assets in my opinion...

What is urban village-ish about the 200m wide corridor of 15-30 story condos that is Yonge street stretching from the Lakeshore to Steeles surrounded by homogeneous use single family homes? It looks completely artificial (I wonder why?) and doesn't reflect any kind of sensible land use planning. Practically a Mid-Western Dubai, paragon of "urban villageism" it is.

Urban villageism is a vague concept in the best of times, but I never took it to mean mixed use land policy as a negative or any kind of inate preference for linear development. I know lots of cities that maintain very successful neighborhood vibes without the bizarre view that all commercial activity or multi-unit housing must be located on a commercial grid street while single family homes dominate the remainder.

EDIT: Though, the few areas where Toronto has tried to create zones of high density mixed use construction (like the area between Yonge, Dundas, University and College) tend to suck pretty hard as well which may explain a bit of our habit for building everything in a line.
 
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Another thing I would change is a certain sense of Toronto exceptionalism. Toronto is a nice city, don't get me wrong, but there are far too many people that think Toronto is the greatest thing since sliced bread and make up all kinds of excuses for what problems we do have. It's not really a major problem as, in the grand scheme of things, Toronto doesn't have very many life or death issues. A while ago we had that Toronto Transit Idiosyncrasies thread and for every fairly obvious instance of idiosyncratic behavior, people would rush out to defend the City with all manner of fuzzy logic. One way streets may work all over Europe, Asia and even Canada, for instance, but introducing them into Toronto would be akin to replacing the Annex with the West Edmonton Mall. Articulated buses may work in every other city, but Toronto's climate is so unique that they would simply break like a cheap Chinese blender on the surface of Venus. Never mind all the stupid excuses people here make for the Leafs.

Maybe it's because of a perceived anti-Toronto bias in the rest of the country, some people feel the need to reflexively stand up to any criticism of anything to do with the City's idealized version of itself as an assault on dignity. David Miller has, on more than a few occasions, rebutted to criticism of his policies by accusing critics of not understanding Toronto or being somehow against the City itself. Lessons from elsewhere are frequently ignored with the simplistic excuse that "[insert random city] gets way more support from the Federal government and therefore has no lessons for us but to ask for more federal money", or "American cities suck, do you want us to end up like them?" (AKA the "we did better than Detroit, therefore we can do no wrong" argument).
 
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On the flip side of that, though, the people who deride Toronto's attempts to be a world-class city by claiming that it will NEVER be a world-class city and we should just stop trying sure are annoying, too.
 

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