Greater Toronto's Sprawl

[doady]

Those numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt though, where you draw the boundaries matters a great deal. The urban areas of suburban Vancouver easily approach the overall density for Toronto (Richmond is 180,000 on 130km^2, or 1700/km^2. Yet 40% of that land is off limits for development and the real density is 2700, on par with the GTA)

If you want to look at it another way, Vancouver's developed 6500 hectares of farmland since implementing the ALR (their equivalent of the greenbelt) in 1974. That's about 1/4 of Mississauga. They've fit a million more people by urbanizing a piece of land that holds maybe 150,000 in the GTA. Yet, if you've been there you realize that even that is a terribly flawed metric.

Urban areas only count lands that have been developed. Hence, the use of the word "urban". The data above is for urban areas. The Toronto area has developed far more densely than the Vancouver, or any other urban area in Canada, it's as simple as that.

 

[W. K. Lis]

For sprawl to continue, it needs cheap oil and its by-products (IE. gasoline, diesel, asphalt). Are we past peak oil, and now on the down-slope? Here's a video on On the Edge with Max Kaiser-Peak oil story-01-27-2011. It's in three parts.

[video=youtube;rUrW76SB7xM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUrW76SB7xM[/video]

[video=youtube;Tuwxw-tpoqk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuwxw-tpoqk[/video]

[video=youtube;5Thvjr56uXc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Thvjr56uXc[/video]

 

[Dan416]

Here we go again....

 

[Yoshimura]

What's the need that's trying to be met here? Or which needs aren't being met?

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/808131--the-run-to-megacity-status-continues#article

Old but good.

 

[Danielinthecity]

Here we go again....

Care to elaborate?

 

[MisterF]

My recollection is that the TransCanada Highway only has 2 interchanges in Vancouver. 1st Avenue and McGill Street. I'd hardly call 1st Avenue wasteful ... so an number of interchanges in Vancouver is ... one.

Metro Vancouver has lots of interchanges. The article was about a suburb, not the central city.

 

[nfitz]

Metro Vancouver has lots of interchanges. The article was about a suburb, not the central city.

The article's only reference to Vancouver is "a cross-section of Vancouver's downtown peninsula, from False Creek to Lost Lagoon". That's not suburbs ... that's central city.

 

[MisterF]

The article's only reference to Vancouver is "a cross-section of Vancouver's downtown peninsula, from False Creek to Lost Lagoon". That's not suburbs ... that's central city.

The reference to False Creek was just a comparison so readers could visualize the kind of size he was talking about. But the article was about interchanges in Vaughan - if you're going to compare to interchanges in Vancouver you have to include the suburbs.

 

[nfitz]

The reference to False Creek was just a comparison so readers could visualize the kind of size he was talking about. But the article was about interchanges in Vaughan - if you're going to compare to interchanges in Vancouver you have to include the suburbs.

However the article talks about Vaughan. It doesn't call it Toronto. Woodbridge_Heights clearly talked about the Trans-Canada going through Vancouver ... not Burnaby ... not Delta .. not Kitimat.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

However the article talks about Vaughan. It doesn't call it Toronto. Woodbridge_Heights clearly talked about the Trans-Canada going through Vancouver ... not Burnaby ... not Delta .. not Kitimat.

Need I explicitly state 'Greater Vancouver'? I thought that was understood.

At least a few people understood that we should be comparing suburbs to suburbs.

 

[nfitz]

Need I explicitly state 'Greater Vancouver'? I thought that was understood.

I'd think you would. You wouldn't talk about the number of 407 interchanges in Toronto would you? You'd say GTA.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Hume: An architect’s vision for high-density suburbs


Feb 27 2011

By Christopher Hume

Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/945714--hume-an-architect-s-vision-for-high-density-suburbs


Long before Drew Adams went to school to study the suburbs he was an expert on the matter — he grew up in Pickering. “I was raised in a typical suburb,†explains the 25-year-old architect. “A lot of things that are promised aren’t delivered. The suburbs are marketed as the American Dream — this is your dream house — they don’t tell you that you have to drive your kids everywhere because they can’t walk anywhere. And with an aging population, people are beginning to realize that the suburbs aren’t the solution to everything.â€

Indeed, what we’ve found is that not only are the suburbs not the answer, they are the problem. At a time of global warming and economic distress, the old strategy of “multiplication by subdivision†— sprawl — can no longer be justified. Though that hasn’t stopped the development industry and its municipal enablers from paving over much of southern Ontario, Adams insists there’s a better way. More important, he also argues that existing suburbs can be rehabilitated, in his word, “reconnected.â€

It’s unlikely suburbanites would take kindly to Adams’ suggestions, but that hasn’t stopped him. His thesis, completed just months ago, proposes a series of moves that would transform the face of suburbia. The most contentious is probably a rezoning that would allow a new layer of housing in spaces now occupied by front yards. “Front setback policies create a lot of space that is never used,†Adams says. “These allowances are really problematic.â€

In his thesis, Adams starts with a typical subdivision from Richmond Hill. Houses are set well back from the sidewalk, even further from the street. It’s clear that the space in between could be put to many other uses. In his scheme, Adams imagines a row of small houses, maybe two storeys, that fill these spaces and form a high-density, mixed-use, streetscape. “Single-family housing isn’t always the best solution,†he argues, “but it comes closest to what people need. I don’t think highrise is appropriate in suburban sites. What we need is lowrise and midrise high-density housing.â€

.....




A typical suburban residential street would be transformed into something like this if architect Drew Adams had his way.

 

[Towered]

*sigh* I long for the days when major streets like Islington and Kipling in Etobicoke will look like that...but how do you re-zone such streets without causing an uproar from all the selfish, single-detached home living NIMBY's that surround them?

 

[Hipster Duck]

^You convert a dead mall here, an empty lot there. You start in corridors that are somewhat 'urban' already, like along O'Connor Drive or the Queensway west of Park Lawn. You build one-storey retail with parking in the back, then you add some midrise, wood-framed residential infill with a relatively conservative design. You build momentum incrementally, rather than radically.