East of the Don = South of the Thames?

[King of Kensington]

While Yonge "officially" divides Toronto east and west, is the Don more appropriate in terms of a boundary?

Is crossing the Don liking crossing the Thames in London (in London there's the urban legend of cabs not wanting to go south of the Thames, it's less served by the tube etc.)

The east and south sides of the river in both cities developed later.

About 40% of London's population is south of the Thames. I don't know what percentage of Torontonians live east of the Don offhand.

The analogy may hold better though if Old Town/St. Lawrence had remained the "city center."

 

[Admiral Beez]

I was born in Lewisham, SE6.

Killearn Rd
London SE6 1BN, UK
https://goo.gl/maps/9Jf8yseUHVJ2

Whenever I return I notice how gentrification has skipped the area, with south London looking worse than it did when I was a young school boy in the 1970s.

On the other hand, pretty much all of the old city of Toronto is gentrifying.

 

[steveintoronto]

I was born in Lewisham, SE6.

Killearn Rd
London SE6 1BN, UK
https://goo.gl/maps/9Jf8yseUHVJ2

Whenever I return I notice how gentrification has skipped the area, with south London looking worse than it did when I was a young school boy in the 1970s.

On the other hand, pretty much all of the old city of Toronto is gentrifying.

As someone born in Ealing (Southall to be exact) and with family returning some forty years ago, save for my brash "North American" self, and having lived back in London in what is actually known as the "South" of London (Balham) for just under a year as a work sojourn (I was working on Denmark Street in the middle of the music biz repairing, designing and developing/building prototype guitar amps for a famous maker there)(I got to meet and work with some pretty noted musicians, nuff said), I have to disagree with your claims.

Lewisham is known geographically as part of *East London*, but on the south shore of the Thames.

• Anna White

18 February 2017 • 6:00am

In 2015, nearly half a million people moved to the UK capital to seek their fortune.

Traditionally, industry and opportunity have been most closely associated with the City of London and the West End. But there is change afoot: areas once perceived as down at heel are fast becoming leading commercial centres in their own right, providing employment to residents and boosting house prices.

Hackney, in east London, recorded the largest increase in GDP in 2016 of any London borough, new research from property advisers CBRE has revealed. It is followed by Newham, Southwark and Brent.

While Westminster made the largest economic contribution, it only rose by two per cent last year in comparison to Hackney’s eight per cent. Jennet Siebrits, head of residential research at CBRE, puts this down to the north-east London borough’s “burgeoning technical and creative hub”.

With Newham, Redbridge, Lewisham and the City of London all in the top 10, the results epitomise the rising of the east to become a dominant player in the London economy and the capital’s cultural identity.

“The real story here is the boom of the technology and creative industries in London, the epicentre of which is Hackney’s Shoreditch,” says Siebrits.

“There’s a rebalancing of London under way, with the east, which has traditionally underperformed, now catching up.”

[...continues at length...]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/londons-golden-boroughs-not-necessarily-think/

30th November 2016
‘Rapid Gentrification’ cause of Lewisham residents' disposable incomes rising fastest in UK
Lewisham and Southwark topped the list of 150 regions in the UK.

Chartered accountants Hacker Young found that disposable incomes in Lewisham and Southwark grew by 5.3 per cent in the past year.

Young professionals moving into the borough are fueling the increase according to research.

The two boroughs saw their rates of disposable income rise from £19,711 to £20,756, which significantly surpassed the national average 0.5 per cent increase.[...]

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/1...nts__disposable_incomes_rising_fastest_in_UK/

Lots more on-line, but perhaps since I subscribe to three UK broadsheets, and The Economist and other pubs, I'm more piqued on the happenings in London. I know what you mean, even during my last sojourn in London, and looking for rentals in the East, it was pretty depressing. And then Stratford and the Olympics epitomized the massive changes happening in East London.

As for Toronto and the east-end, it all depends on where. Many areas have gone up-scale, most is unaffordable by average Cdn standards, but there's still some pretty grotty pockets, and some gems.

It's pretty defeatist to generalize as widely as "east" or "south".

 

[UserNameToronto]

Some thoughts:

- South London is newer, more car friendly, with many fewer tube stops per capita. Despite a large population it's thought of less often than N, W, or E London. In these senses, east of the Don (mostly Scarborough) is a lot like south of the river.
- The area immediately east of the Don is quite urban, but it tapers off and becomes residential. South of the Thames in Zone 1 it's pretty urban, but then thins out similarly.
- Londoners adhere more to cultural geography than actual geography. Dalston is physically north, but culturally east. Islington which is adjecent is regarded quite differently.

 

[King of Kensington]

Certainly people I know who move east of the Don lament that their friends no longer visit them, that BlogTO, Spacing, Toronto Life and NOW pay little attention to their part of town etc.

South Londoners I think often feel similar treatment.

 

[King of Kensington]

As for Toronto and the east-end, it all depends on where. Many areas have gone up-scale, most is unaffordable by average Cdn standards, but there's still some pretty grotty pockets, and some gems.

It's pretty defeatist to generalize as widely as "east" or "south".

The psychological boundary has little to do with "upscale" or "grotty." The Beaches is affluent but pretty removed.

 

[UserNameToronto]

Certainly people I know who move east of the Don lament that their friends no longer visit them, that BlogTO, Spacing, Toronto Life and NOW pay little attention to their part of town etc.

South Londoners I think often feel similar treatment.

Spot on. South London feels "removed", not necessarily sketchy though...Dulwich is lovely, and even Peckham and Brixton have gentrified.

 

[ADRM]

Some thoughts:

- South London is newer, more car friendly, with many fewer tube stops per capita. Despite a large population it's thought of less often than N, W, or E London. In these senses, east of the Don (mostly Scarborough) is a lot like south of the river.
- The area immediately east of the Don is quite urban, but it tapers off and becomes residential. South of the Thames in Zone 1 it's pretty urban, but then thins out similarly.
- Londoners adhere more to cultural geography than actual geography. Dalston is physically north, but culturally east. Islington which is adjecent is regarded quite differently.

All of this is spot on; when I lived in London, I found people's mental associations of south-of-the-river track fairly closely to some combination of socio-economic status, age, and cultural heritage.

The simple truth is that the "traditional" view of north vs. south of the river no longer holds as widely as it once did, for a whole bunch of reasons -- yet, still, to the point made in the third bullet in the quoted post, certain areas south of the river have always been exempt from the pejorative associations, and more areas south of the river are being added to that exemption list, as well.

Today, some of the most expensive real estate in Europe, let alone London, is on the southern riverbank.

 

[King of Kensington]

What's kinda funny is that London, Ontario's social geography vaguely resembles London: academic/intellectual north, affluent west and working class east.

 

[King of Kensington]

Doing a quick estimate (Scarborough + Danforth, Beaches-East York and Don Valley East and North ridings), and I get a population of 1,053,000 or 39% of the city's population. That's very close to the percentage of the population of London that's south of the Thames.