Vaughan has multiple heritage districts, particularly in Kleinburg, Thornhill and Maple. Not to criticize your attempt at political satire and/or wit, but it's about as relevant as me showing this picture of Toronto and asking where all its world class heritage and diversity are.
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There's a subway there too - just look at all that great, progressive, transit-oriented development!
The small handful of heritage areas that exist are a tiny oasis of charm in a city of endless suburbia. Kleinburg is probably the prettiest of the three but I never got to visit it yet because it's located in a far flung corner of Vaughan where the primitive YRT transit system is especially useless. As much as I would like to see it, it's much easier to get to Unionville or old Richmond Hill, both of which have more streetlife than anywhere in Vaughan (aside from the parking lot at Canada's Wonderland).
As for the pictures, the difference between Vaughan and Toronto is that Vaughan's buildform is overwhelmingly suburban, sprawling industrial parks, etc. Therefore I feel like the picture I posted was perfectly representative of what Vaughan looks like to pretty much everyone. Even a simple
google image search of "Vaughan" doesn't reveal any pictures of those lovely heritage districts you speak of. As soon as you scroll past all those city logos, you get stuff like this:
It is what it is. I don't have to cherry-pick anything.
Every mayor has a BS boilerplate thing like that, I just guess you've never seen one before. I suppose if you were a Vaughan citizen you'd want the mayor publicly downplaying the city, talking about how bad traffic is, there's too much sprawl etc. I'm sure when John Tory talks about Toronto he humbly downplays Toronto being The Best City Ever and talks honestly about all its problems.
No, I don't want the mayor to downplay the city. I want their rhetoric to be more in line with reality.
"I don’t think we can proclaim this a truly great city … great to me is a descriptive that I would apply to a city that has better handled these problems. Our goal in the next four years must be to unite us as one Toronto and turn a good city into a truly great one."
- John Tory
At least Tory has good justification to talk about Toronto being "world class", given the international recognition. But that hasn't stopped him from also being honest about the issues such as traffic congestion, transit, and lack of affordable housing. He talks about that all the time.
That parking lot seems a bit stupid to me but it's hardly irreplaceable in the long-term and it's not like they were going to do 100% underground parking, certainly less so in the first phases. (Shocking true fact: downtown Toronto has surface parking garages!)
The garages were build in a different era. Many of them have since been redeveloped and continue to do so. Toronto is not building brand new ones in downtown, in 2016.
Seriously - mocking Vaughan is shooting fish in a barrel. But if you're going to do it, bring something substantive to the table.
I apologize for the lack of substance in my bashing of your fine city. But when Vaughan generates so much hot air about how vibrant and world class it is when it so obviously isn't, while feeling the need to shove the word "metropolitan" down our throats, I can't help but feel compelled to mock it.
