Pep'rJack
Active Member
A City's Future Up in the Air
Toronto has chosen one path, but there is still hope for Vancouver to be something else
by Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun, June 3, 2010
When a British Columbian flies east to Ontario, his or her first inkling that one is entering a different country is the sight of Toronto from the air.
Unlike Vancouver, where the city shows the bumps and folds of the land under it, and where one feels the claustrophobia of a city hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, Toronto from the air looks as flat as a bedsheet. It sprawls outward from the Lake Ontario shore in whichever direction it pleases, eating away at the pretty checkerboard of farms and woodlots at its edges. Here and there are big dense islands of highrises, dozens and dozens of them, that rise above the plain of the city like seamounts from the ocean floor. But Toronto is a horizontal city, not a vertical one, and it spreads outward forever. It does so, one senses, because it so wishes. There is a hubris to the way Toronto builds itself. If Vancouver is about the limits of growth - and where else would the modern environmental movement be born than in a city where its geography constantly reminds it of its limits? -then Toronto is about the reach of insatiable appetite. That reach appears to be limitless, even from the window seat of a plane 20,000 feet up in the air. It inspires, I have to admit, awe.
It had been, what? - three years between visits? Things had changed in that time and not changed. People still drove the freeways like complete dill-holes. The morning rush hours were still impossible (having come to a complete stop on a six-lane freeway at 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning 50 kilometres outside the city). The city's dynamism, sophistication and sheer size of its economy still dwarfed Vancouver's. It was still a great city, despite the cliche that the rest of Canada reserves a special place in its heartburn for it. I like Toronto. Most people I know do.
But something had changed. Some of it was intangible and some of it was, literally, concrete.
It was fraying at the edges, for one thing. A growing network of freeways rung the city, and in between them, and feeding off them, was a huge belt of industrial parks, transmission lines, office towers, airports, ersatz golf courses, strip malls and giant swaths of new suburban tract housing that were as uniform as they were ugly. These subdivisions went on and on, cheek by jowl, with a desolate sameness, on a slow, inexorable march toward the outlying farmland.
These subdivisions are now beginning to reach the edges of the province's officially protected greenbelt. What was once the verdant but far-off hinterland of the beautiful Ontario countryside will eventually be leapfrogged by the city and then enclosed by it. There, the farms and forests in it will be preserved as a kind of bucolic throwback, a pretty weekend backdrop for urbanite bike riders pedalling $2,000 carbon fibre 10-speeds.
More than just greenery has disappeared, I think. I have family who live inside the city, in the greenbelt and in the countryside 100 kilometres outside of Toronto, and they all watch the city's growth with the same sense of fearful resignation. Where once Toronto was the shining hope for a better future, the model of the well-run city that all cities only hoped to be, is now merely what all big North American cities have become - a metastasizing cancer. It eats away at the public conscience as it does farmland.
Not that Toronto has a copyright on ravenous growth. On the return flight home, the view out the plane's window as we were beginning our descent was greener, wetter but with that same sense of momentum to the urban landscape. Things in the valley were filling in, led by a vanguard of hobby farms and stand-alone subdivisions.
I have in the last few years begun to wonder how long before I still believe this to be a wonderful place to live. The same fearful resignation my relatives feel in Ontario have begun to nag at me here. Projections call for three million people in the Metro Vancouver area by 2031, and from the window seat of a plane coming home, I could not help but think, we have arrived at a watershed. There is a decision to be made.
Will we be Toronto, or some new version of the city?
pmcmartin@vancouversun.com
Toronto has chosen one path, but there is still hope for Vancouver to be something else
by Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun, June 3, 2010
When a British Columbian flies east to Ontario, his or her first inkling that one is entering a different country is the sight of Toronto from the air.
Unlike Vancouver, where the city shows the bumps and folds of the land under it, and where one feels the claustrophobia of a city hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, Toronto from the air looks as flat as a bedsheet. It sprawls outward from the Lake Ontario shore in whichever direction it pleases, eating away at the pretty checkerboard of farms and woodlots at its edges. Here and there are big dense islands of highrises, dozens and dozens of them, that rise above the plain of the city like seamounts from the ocean floor. But Toronto is a horizontal city, not a vertical one, and it spreads outward forever. It does so, one senses, because it so wishes. There is a hubris to the way Toronto builds itself. If Vancouver is about the limits of growth - and where else would the modern environmental movement be born than in a city where its geography constantly reminds it of its limits? -then Toronto is about the reach of insatiable appetite. That reach appears to be limitless, even from the window seat of a plane 20,000 feet up in the air. It inspires, I have to admit, awe.
It had been, what? - three years between visits? Things had changed in that time and not changed. People still drove the freeways like complete dill-holes. The morning rush hours were still impossible (having come to a complete stop on a six-lane freeway at 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning 50 kilometres outside the city). The city's dynamism, sophistication and sheer size of its economy still dwarfed Vancouver's. It was still a great city, despite the cliche that the rest of Canada reserves a special place in its heartburn for it. I like Toronto. Most people I know do.
But something had changed. Some of it was intangible and some of it was, literally, concrete.
It was fraying at the edges, for one thing. A growing network of freeways rung the city, and in between them, and feeding off them, was a huge belt of industrial parks, transmission lines, office towers, airports, ersatz golf courses, strip malls and giant swaths of new suburban tract housing that were as uniform as they were ugly. These subdivisions went on and on, cheek by jowl, with a desolate sameness, on a slow, inexorable march toward the outlying farmland.
These subdivisions are now beginning to reach the edges of the province's officially protected greenbelt. What was once the verdant but far-off hinterland of the beautiful Ontario countryside will eventually be leapfrogged by the city and then enclosed by it. There, the farms and forests in it will be preserved as a kind of bucolic throwback, a pretty weekend backdrop for urbanite bike riders pedalling $2,000 carbon fibre 10-speeds.
More than just greenery has disappeared, I think. I have family who live inside the city, in the greenbelt and in the countryside 100 kilometres outside of Toronto, and they all watch the city's growth with the same sense of fearful resignation. Where once Toronto was the shining hope for a better future, the model of the well-run city that all cities only hoped to be, is now merely what all big North American cities have become - a metastasizing cancer. It eats away at the public conscience as it does farmland.
Not that Toronto has a copyright on ravenous growth. On the return flight home, the view out the plane's window as we were beginning our descent was greener, wetter but with that same sense of momentum to the urban landscape. Things in the valley were filling in, led by a vanguard of hobby farms and stand-alone subdivisions.
I have in the last few years begun to wonder how long before I still believe this to be a wonderful place to live. The same fearful resignation my relatives feel in Ontario have begun to nag at me here. Projections call for three million people in the Metro Vancouver area by 2031, and from the window seat of a plane coming home, I could not help but think, we have arrived at a watershed. There is a decision to be made.
Will we be Toronto, or some new version of the city?
pmcmartin@vancouversun.com
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