Why the Hate for Mississauga?

[hbl33]

Well said, scarberian and doady.

As adma alluded to earlier, Toronto vs Mississauga is a misguided battle in the first place. I'm not sure which is more embarrassing: self-proclaimed urbanites turning their noses up at everything outside some arbitrary area code or dyed-in-the-wool Mississaugans who wishfully speak of Toronto as if it were some far-off land.

Mississauga *is* Toronto; a fact that won't be widely recognized on either side for a long while yet apparently.

WELL NOW IT MAKES SOME REAL MOT'AHFJUKCIGN SENSE (no exaggeration intended) FOR ME AS WELL

At the first posting in UT, I felt too literal of being defensive about the city, as Saugans seeming to defend mindlessly against T-Dotians who accuse them of "gud ol' fiddi's" mindset.

The real understanding between them is the experience between those with actual exposure to a universally-acknowledged city status and those who were born'&bred' s'burbians. One who had seen their bygone times of radical change in Toronto, pre-suburbania times; the other from the other generation of "urban paradise" in GTA.

The paradigm of a city, to everyone, is just a place with large population, big skyscrapers, big traffic and lotsa malls, houses and all that stuff. Which really differs and vaguely traces from the simple definition: a settlement with a significant status (whether history, cultural, political or whatever it is defined).

Anyways, to really attack an urbanite by suburbian is seemingly bashing (as is Counter-culture, only less civilized), while urbanians countering against the suburbian is rather overlooking the continuously-evolving urban identity. Really, each should be proud of where they live and where they represent. Once another suburb is established (other than Brampton and the rest of York burbs), same vicious cycles revolve around them.

This is a testimony from a Saugan.

 

[adma]

Well said, scarberian and doady.

As adma alluded to earlier, Toronto vs Mississauga is a misguided battle in the first place. I'm not sure which is more embarrassing: self-proclaimed urbanites turning their noses up at everything outside some arbitrary area code or dyed-in-the-wool Mississaugans who wishfully speak of Toronto as if it were some far-off land.

Mississauga *is* Toronto; a fact that won't be widely recognized on either side for a long while yet apparently.

Exactly: Mississauga as an extension of Toronto, not as an inert-object rejection thereof. There are reasons why it's called the GTA, i.e. the Greater Toronto Area. Accept it.

And, to repeat: a lot of this "disdain" would probably also be due to Torontonians who knock down an Eden Smith in Forest Hill for some kind of Richard Wengle schlock, and then waltz into this forum all so peacock-proud...

 

[Dan416]

I don't think anyone would argue that Mississauga is not a part of Toronto. If the 416/905 split hadn't happened, and 905 had been an overlay instead of a a georgraphic split, how much resentment would there be toward 905ers? I blame Bell Canada for this lol.

Seriously though, how can Mississaugans hate Toronto when for Mississaugans going "downtown" means going to "downtown Toronto" and not MCC, Streetsville or Port Credit? I don't think anyone in Mississauga would even say "let's go to Toronto". It just sounds weird. We're in Toronto. We would just be going downtown. That's my experience anyway.

 

[OttoSchloss]

it smells like gin and regret!

 

[syn]

So first people it is claimed that Mississauga is highly connected to Toronto, but now it is claimed that people in Mississauga don't even know that Toronto is really like? I think there is a contradiction here.

There is no contradiction. It is obviously close by, and that's why I found some of the attitudes so unusual. I wasn't expecting attitudes to be much different, but they often were.

I don't think the most people in Mississauga consider Torontonians to be mean. I have never anyone here say "Torontonians are mean" or anything to that effect. It seems weird to me...

I'm not saying all people share that opinion (let's keep in mind, these were students referring to the St. George UofT Campus). The point was that there are certainly some very skewed and unrealistic perceptions of Toronto.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Exactly: Mississauga as an extension of Toronto, not as an inert-object rejection thereof. There are reasons why it's called the GTA, i.e. the Greater Toronto Area. Accept it.

And, to repeat: a lot of this "disdain" would probably also be due to Torontonians who knock down an Eden Smith in Forest Hill for some kind of Richard Wengle schlock, and then waltz into this forum all so peacock-proud...

The Town of York grew by annexing villages, towns, and cities such as Yorkville, Parkdale, North Toronto, West Toronto, etc.. They were originally suburbs, but unlike the suburbs of today, were walkable. You had transit, you had neighbourhood schools and shops, all within walking distance. Not so nowadays.

People have been writing how much better European cities are so much better than North American cities, because they are oriented towards people and not the automobile. After World War II, those cities were rebuilt and were still walkable. In North America, the cites and suburbs looked like they were bombed and replaced with parking lots.

 

[ShonTron]

Seriously though, how can Mississaugans hate Toronto when for Mississaugans going "downtown" means going to "downtown Toronto" and not MCC, Streetsville or Port Credit? I don't think anyone in Mississauga would even say "let's go to Toronto". It just sounds weird. We're in Toronto. We would just be going downtown. That's my experience anyway.

Not to knock Mississauga, but it doesn't have an easily identifiable "Downtown" simply because of its history. In the 1970s through to the mid 1980s, my parents (who lived in a condo on Bloor in Mississauga before moving to Brampton in 1980) thought that Cooksville was Downtown Mississauga, it being the location of the first City Hall, the intersection of two highways (5 and 10, and with the old MTO green traffic lights until 1991 or so).

There is no "Downtown Mississauga", so there's no confusion. Though I bet many, if not most, Mississaugans now what "Mississauga City Centre" is. In Brampton, with a traditional downtown that the city kept as such (even after swallowing Bramalea and going very suburban), there is a confusion. I would bet the same confusion over just saying "downtown" in Oakville, Burlington, Newmarket, Oshawa and a few other 905 municipalities (Milton and Whitby also come to mind) that evolved from a small town centre to a suburban megacity.

 

[khris]

I don't think anyone in Mississauga would even say "let's go to Toronto". It just sounds weird. We're in Toronto. We would just be going downtown. That's my experience anyway.

Ya, that's definitely true. However, people from Brampton tend to say they're going to "downtown Toronto". It's interesting to hear people say that, when they're in the GTA. I guess it's because Brampton has a downtown. Although it's not much, and not really a destination if you ask me.

 

[Cooool]

I never understood why people critisize Mississauga for exhibiting suburban qualities. Afterall, isn't that what it is?

I hear people saying how there are no pedestrians, no cafes, and more car usage. But isn't that how cities generally work? The city centre (Toronto) is urban and the surrounding surburbs (Mississauga, Brampton) are suburban? Is this any different than other cities?

It just seems like people are very resentful towards Mississauga and refer to it as a suburban wasteland. I don't see how it's different than Vaughan.

 

[taal]

I never understood why people critisize Mississauga for exhibiting suburban qualities. Afterall, isn't that what it is?

I hear people saying how there are no pedestrians, no cafes, and more car usage. But isn't that how cities generally work? The city centre (Toronto) is urban and the surrounding surburbs (Mississauga, Brampton) are suburban? Is this any different than other cities?

It just seems like people are very resentful towards Mississauga and refer to it as a suburban wasteland. I don't see how it's different than Vaughan.

They don't at all ...

It's just people on this forum who do. Try to find someone - a *real* person who's familiar with Mississauga and says they "hate" it - they might say they don't want to live there, they might say they wish they did, but not hate it.

 

[doady]

I never understood why people critisize Mississauga for exhibiting suburban qualities. Afterall, isn't that what it is?

I hear people saying how there are no pedestrians, no cafes, and more car usage. But isn't that how cities generally work? The city centre (Toronto) is urban and the surrounding surburbs (Mississauga, Brampton) are suburban? Is this any different than other cities?

It just seems like people are very resentful towards Mississauga and refer to it as a suburban wasteland. I don't see how it's different than Vaughan.

Mississauga is probably more similar to Toronto than to Vaughan. Most of Toronto itself is suburban, after all. Most people here conveniently forget that.

It is like this book I read once where the mulattos were acting all racist toward the pure black people. Toronto's hate for Mississauga is very similar to that.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Here's a link to an abandoned suburban city, California City.

In the desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles is a suburb abandoned in advance of itself—the unfinished extension of a place called California City. Visible from above now are a series of badly paved streets carved into the dust and gravel, like some peculiarly American response to the Nazca Lines (or even the labyrinth at Chartres cathedral). The uninhabited street plan has become an abstract geoglyph—unintentional land art visible from airplanes—not a thriving community at all.

At least Mississauga is close to Toronto, so shouldn't suffer the same fate.

 

[doady]

The latest issue of Color magazine shocases a photographer who photographs abandoned suburban retail, such as malls and big box, and it interesting how much abandonment there is.

James Howard Kunstler has the theory that all suburbs will become slums because they are car dependent. Even if that were true, I think most of Toronto's suburbs are not so completely car dependent that they can't adapt.

 

[adma]

Here's a link to an abandoned suburban city, California City.

My impression of the Google street views

 

[scarberiankhatru]

It's not so much hate for Mississauga as it is just people copying and pasting the same stupid 'criticisms' over and over without considering what the real alternatives were/are. People on this forum get amazingly defensive when the slightest bit of hope or good news comes out of the 905...got to keep that suburban bogeyman alive!

A small downtown could possibly have been created at Cooksville or Port Credit but a civic centre would not work anywhere else other than a large greenfield site. Mississauga's planned city centre is far too large to have been built anywhere other than next to Square One. Markham knew the same thing even though their downtown-in-progress is smaller...they could either destroy one of their existing villages, or build a new one. Mississauga has been building its civic centre like a giant game of urban Yahtzee; as it builds, it slowly checks all the components off its list of what it thinks a city/civic centre needs. Even if it builds the whole list, from a college campus to a piazza filled with fountains and sculptures to a homeless shelter (oh, wait...), that won't automatically mean a "downtown," the kind of place Petula Clark was singing about, has been created.

Port Credit would have been completely smothered (and I do mean mostly razed to the ground) by less than what has already been built around Square One, let alone by what is planned. Cooksville has no advantages, either...no good street retail strip, no real historic base, no usable street grid, even. It's a little bit closer to the GO train, but so what? Transit to other spots in Mississauga is infinitely more important. MCC is as large as downtown Toronto, and Toronto does just fine with the Yonge & Bloor/Yorkville/UofT area being outside of walking distance to Union station.

Is Brampton's downtown an urban site of any consequence? And that's what Port Credit or Cooksville would aspire to, even though they both already have larger populations. Imagine downtown Brampton or Port Credit with hundreds of added stores, thousands of added jobs, and tens of thousands of added residents. Then, double these figures. Then, possibly triple them. That's why the scale of MCC is the problem, not the location or the architecture or the alleged pedestrian-unfriendliness or anything else...Square One's parking lots are a huge monolithic barrier and the mall's singular ownership makes this a long-term problem, yet MCC extends beyond this vast mall on every side and only a fraction of the development is finished.

Here's a link to an abandoned suburban city, California City.

At least Mississauga is close to Toronto, so shouldn't suffer the same fate.

Don't you see the difference between abandoned and unbuilt?

What's more interesting than unbuilt suburbs like California City is the pre-platted suburbs that are seeing growth but are having problems rejigging the grid and lot patterns to make the areas viable. The 'ideal subdivision' has changed drastically in the past few decades...it's much more compact, for one thing. The ideal city/civic centre has also changed since Mississauga started building theirs...the fact that so many parking lots and empty fields litter MCC is really helpful since it will allow the remaining sites to be built to whatever new visions are created, instead of having to redevelop stuff just built.