City's Future Up in the Air - Toronto has chosen one path...still hope for Vancouver

[Tewder]

The criticisms in this article are legitimate, but they don't have anything much to do with the character of the two cities or their governments. The difference in urban planing is mostly due to geography. Vancouver is surrounded by water on three sides, and you hit mountains and wilderness parks if you go much further. Toronto on three sides is surrounded by flat rolling fields that present no real barrier to development.

I see that the signs announcing 'Green Belt' keep being pushed back. Darn right there's something our governments can do about this. Lots can be done to encourage, indeed legislate, density including funding commitments to mass transit, among other things. Still, cheerleaders like Oliver Tweed are happy they get to live downtown and go clubbing! For them everything is perfect as long as there are really tall, cool buildings being built.

 

[MisterF]

^ sure they make sense when you consider that to him "Toronto" is the GTA in the same way that his "Vancouver" probably includes the entire GVA.

To clarify, the urban area of the GTA is more densely populated than the urban area of the Lower Mainland. By a significant margin.

 

[CN Tower]

It is not what all big North American cities are; it is very different in many ways. Most notably, people are moving into the city core rather than escaping to the suburbs.

Actually, the census data shows the complete opposite. Hardly any growth at all in the City:

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-rece...&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=

Population and dwelling counts Toronto, City
Total
Population in 2006 2,503,281
Population in 2001 2,481,494
2001 to 2006 population change (%) 0.9

Regardless, the article carries a rather nasty undertone. It's mocking in the way that gossip blogs mock the beautiful movie stars when caught off guard by the paparazzi. Fortunately we the stars care very little for the opinions of the gawkers in other parts of the country as long as they keep watching our movies,

 

[Hipster Duck]

I agree with Tewder. One of the main problems with the mentality of many Torontonians is that we tend to react to criticism in a kneejerk fashion by bringing up comparisons to the city that the person making the critique is from.

As far as I'm concerned, a person from the most sprawling cities on earth: Atlanta, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Charlotte, Memphis and other places in the US Southeast - has just as much legitimacy to critique Toronto's sprawl as someone from Hong Kong or Barcelona. This would be the same as a sports writer for the Toronto Star making a comment about the lousiness of a hockey team in another city, even though he is from a city that's home to the Leafs. People, especially those who have traveled sufficiently, are not conditioned to consider the place they call home to be a desirable goal in all regards and, besides, one person writing for a newspaper is not going to have a lot of control over the complex dynamics of urban growth (or hockey).

It's true that Vancouver might be less dense and have lower transit ridership than Toronto on a per capita basis, but that doesn't diminish the fact that sprawl and growth are huge problems in Toronto - perhaps bigger than they might be in Vancouver because of our much larger size and population growth. To turn this around and say "but these are problems in Vancouver" is missing the point. If you read into this a little further it's pretty obvious that the author's main concern is with the direction that Vancouver is heading, and not the state of Toronto.

 

[jn_12]

To clarify, the urban area of the GTA is more densely populated than the urban area of the Lower Mainland. By a significant margin.

really?
GVA = 735/km2
GTA = 779/km2

is 44/km2 that significant? it's only a 5% difference.

(note, i'm not getting into an argument about statistics. I'm just saying that the densities are pretty similar)

 

[taal]

really?
GVA = 735/km2
GTA = 779/km2

is 44/km2 that significant? it's only a 5% difference.

(note, i'm not getting into an argument about statistics. I'm just saying that the densities are pretty similar)

These really depend on what exactly is included in the GTA vs GVA i.e. how much land - we know there are a lot of people who live right outside the GTA, some goes for the GVA (maybe?)

 

[lead82]

It's deceiving to think that all these condos are not actually bringing much of an increase in the city's population growth. There is one reason for this: Families are leaving the city in droves due to eroded housing affordability.

The people moving into the city are singles, retirees and childless couples. Families with children are moving out because of increased cost of living with the crazy cost of real-estate these days. This will only continue as the city becomes more and more a yuppie and retiree community downtown, with poverty all around the edges, and families living in 905.

Toronto has not done enough to allow for families to live in the city. The new condo's are way too small for families, and the bigger units are insanely priced! ($600-700K for a 2br 1000 sq ft box?). We need to encourage more developers to build less super fancy designer condos with all the amenities and we need to build more affordable condo units that are LARGE, and buildings don't necessarily need to have anything. Security, gym, pools and all that stuff is over-rated and costs a lot to build and maintain.

Most people would love to have options to not have to pay for all those services that 90% of the unit owner's don't even use on a regular basis. Build more affordable units and the city's population will increase, otherwise more sprawl as families move further and further afield to be able to afford decent sized units for a decent price.

 

[jn_12]

These really depend on what exactly is included in the GTA vs GVA i.e. how much land - we know there are a lot of people who live right outside the GTA, some goes for the GVA (maybe?)

yes I know. I said I'm not going to get into an argument about densities. It's a pretty boring conversation that serves little purpose really.
But if anyone cares enough and wishes to disect, I got them from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area

 

[MisterF]

Actually, the census data shows the complete opposite. Hardly any growth at all in the City:

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-rece...&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=

Population and dwelling counts Toronto, City
Total
Population in 2006 2,503,281
Population in 2001 2,481,494
2001 to 2006 population change (%) 0.9

Regardless, the article carries a rather nasty undertone. It's mocking in the way that gossip blogs mock the beautiful movie stars when caught off guard by the paparazzi. Fortunately we the stars care very little for the opinions of the gawkers in other parts of the country as long as they keep watching our movies,

Downtown residential growth rivals growth in most of the suburban municipalities. The growth is less impressive for the city as a whole because of shrinking household sizes.

really?
GVA = 735/km2
GTA = 779/km2

is 44/km2 that significant? it's only a 5% difference.

(note, i'm not getting into an argument about statistics. I'm just saying that the densities are pretty similar)

Yes, really. You're comparing areas that include vast rural areas. Since the article is about urban sprawl, comparing the density of farms and mountains is meaningless. The urban area of each city is defined by Statistics Canada and doesn't rely on political boundaries. The Toronto UA has about 2700 people per sq km, Vancouver has about 1700. You might find debates about density boring, but the crux of the article was about urban sprawl, so density is central to the discussion. Essentially Vancouver's sprawl is worse, but you don't notice it as much because it's a smaller city surrounded by mountains.

 

[jaycola]

I would say the Golden Horseshoe is a better representation of Toronto's true regional population than is the GTA. When we speak of traffic 50KM from the core, it's just as likely a commuter from Burlington or Hamilton going to Oakville as it is a commuter coming into the core. The population of the Golden Horseshoe is over 8.1 Million or greater than all of Quebec or about equal to all of BC and Alberta populations combined.
The Golden Horseshoe covers a land mass roughly equal to the state of Maryland. It's huge and very densly populated. It's difficult to understand how the author is comparing the sprawl of Vancouver area's 2.1 million to the many times larger population of the Toronto area without once mentioning the differences in population. Golden Horseshoe

The Ontario Government has takes steps to contain sprawl with just 5% of the land remaining within the greenbelt available for new development. With a focus on urban intensification and "Nodal Growth", i feel steps are being taken to reign in sprawl in a region expected to grow by over 100,000 per year for the next 20 years. Places to grow 2006

The author is correct that sprawl is a fact in the Toronto area, but in time I expect we will see more growth within the urban boundries than outside of them,

 

[Hipster Duck]

Somewhat lost in this debate is what constitutes 'sprawl' and what type of sprawl is worse than others. It depends on who you ask.

For an ecologist, exurban sprawl like Atlanta or Boston is considered preferable to Toronto. Characterized by extremely low densities (in outer Atlanta, some areas might as well have the density of Muskoka), interspersed with woodlots and lakes and with little of the area actually paved or occupied by built infrastructure, wildlife corridors can still exist in regions like these. In contrast, the treeless landscape of a townhouse development in North Markham with a high amount of paved surfaces is more or less the death of whatever ecosystem existed there before.

From a city management perspective, Toronto's sprawl with its relatively dense, non-leapfrog development is preferable to pretty much anything else because it doesn't necessitate the construction of enormous amounts of physical infrastructure. Building water and sewer mains in Atlanta, for example, must be very cost prohibitive (all other things being equal) because you have to lay a lot of pipe (to use a funny term) to service fewer taxpayers.

From a food systems perspective, Toronto's sprawl onto high quality farmland is not encouraging, but probably better than sprawl in the Bay Area which encroaches on extremely valuable farmland. In areas where a high value crop is grown, such as vineyards, sprawl tends to be much more tightly reined in. On the other hand, sprawl in a city like Calgary or Las Vegas doesn't matter to an agricultural expert, because these are not food producing regions; sprawl in Calgary encroaches on marginal ranchland and sprawl in Las Vegas spills out into a desert that has never been farmed. From an ag POV, I imagine that sprawl in the Lower Mainland is just as bad, if not worse, than sprawl in the GTA.

And these are just differing perspectives from a disciplinary point of view. We should also take into account the points of view of different people who live amidst this sprawl, including people of different income groups, cultural groups, business needs, etc.

Throw all these societal factors into the mix, and what constitutes "bad" sprawl becomes very difficult to characterize.

 

[nfitz]

In the three years between his visits, what miraculous new network of freeways have appeared in the city? I can't think of a single one. The last one was the 407 and it's been here what, at least 10 years now?

The 410 has been extended to Highway 10, the 404 is currently being extended towards Lake Simcoe. 401 is being widened to a collector/express configuration from 410 to Mavis. The alignments for the 407 extension to 115 has been approved. QEW is being widened through Burlington/Oakville. There's been some 401 widening between 427 and 404. The EA is ongoing for a couple of other projects. It's been a pretty steady expansion for decades. If only the Ministry of Transportation was so consistent with transit expansion.

 

[Jonny5]

The 410 has been extended to Highway 10, the 404 is currently being extended towards Lake Simcoe. 401 is being widened to a collector/express configuration from 410 to Mavis. The alignments for the 407 extension to 115 has been approved. QEW is being widened through Burlington/Oakville. There's been some 401 widening between 427 and 404. The EA is ongoing for a couple of other projects. It's been a pretty steady expansion for decades. If only the Ministry of Transportation was so consistent with transit expansion.

I think the BC governemnt has a program that is about the equivalent. I'm not sure why the author of the article is not aware of it.

http://www.gatewayprogram.bc.ca/

 

[SimonP]

The reason the city population numbers have stayed the same even with the building boom downtown can mostly be attributed to gentrification. If you look at where Toronto lost population in the last five years it in places like the Beaches, Parkdale, and Bloor West Village. Many of the larger homes in these neighbourhoods were once subdivided into apartments. As these areas got wealthier, these have steadily been converted back into single family homes, greatly decreasing the population density.

 

[syn]

I agree with Tewder. One of the main problems with the mentality of many Torontonians is that we tend to react to criticism in a kneejerk fashion by bringing up comparisons to the city that the person making the critique is from.

As far as I'm concerned, a person from the most sprawling cities on earth: Atlanta, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Charlotte, Memphis and other places in the US Southeast - has just as much legitimacy to critique Toronto's sprawl as someone from Hong Kong or Barcelona. This would be the same as a sports writer for the Toronto Star making a comment about the lousiness of a hockey team in another city, even though he is from a city that's home to the Leafs. People, especially those who have traveled sufficiently, are not conditioned to consider the place they call home to be a desirable goal in all regards and, besides, one person writing for a newspaper is not going to have a lot of control over the complex dynamics of urban growth (or hockey).

It's true that Vancouver might be less dense and have lower transit ridership than Toronto on a per capita basis, but that doesn't diminish the fact that sprawl and growth are huge problems in Toronto - perhaps bigger than they might be in Vancouver because of our much larger size and population growth. To turn this around and say "but these are problems in Vancouver" is missing the point. If you read into this a little further it's pretty obvious that the author's main concern is with the direction that Vancouver is heading, and not the state of Toronto.

I agree as well. I didn't really see anything wrong with the article.