Softee
Active Member
What he ^ said, if Toronto isn't a big city, then there are only a few cities on the entire continent that would qualify as such. Amalgamation or not, Toronto is a very big city and has been for quite some time now.
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Lifeless Bay St and University Ave
- Thread starter kkgg7
- Start date
junctionist
Senior Member
I would have to disagree. Toronto has the big city vibe across the city. You see it everywhere from downtown to the suburbs. In the suburbs there are the suburban city centres filled with high-rises, which is strikingly metropolitan. The streets are filled with people day and night; we're talking about the two exceptions in this thread that stand out as different. Festivals like Nuit Blanche or Doors Open which just create this awesome energy of seemingly hundreds of thousands of people coming out. The diversity of national culture, of immigrant culture, of businesses, and institutions feels like what you expect in a big city, a national metropolis. Have you ever taken a ferry to the islands on a long weekend and seen the volume of people? To say Toronto isn't a big city is foolish.
kkgg7
Banned
well, this continent has two countries anyway. Toronto maybe kind of big in so called north America standard, but to call it "very big" is simply not true, if you have been to Hong Kong, or Shanghai, or London, or Tokyo, you would know Toronto is NOT big, nor dense. It is a typical mid-sized city.
I like Toronto for what it is, but I would never consider it as a big city, nor do many of my friends. Yes, someone from North Bay or Barrie might think it is huge, but it really is not. 90% of the city is way too residential (aka: you never ever need to go there if you don't live there) with no or close to no commercial activity. Away from downtown core (which is very small) and the subway line, the city is very sparsely populated.
I am traveling in a large city now. There are 11 subway lines here. You take it for over an hour, get out, and there are still 30+ stories buildings around you, streets packed with people, stores, restaurants everywhere you go, that's what I call a very big city. In Toronto, you take the transit for 40 minutes you are already in the suburbs. (for example, Dundas/Dufferin is basically the suburb to me, or Queen/Coxwell).
There is really no point in arguing bigness. Whoever think cities like Vancouver is a big city obviously has very different life experience and standard from mine. When I talk about big, i look at the globe. I don't know why people love talking about "north america“. it almost sounds funny to me. there are a total of two countries in north america, three if you include mexico, so being big in north america really doesn't mean anything.
I don't mean to belittle Toronto. New York City is the only big city in North America. Chicago is almost a big city. Toronto/Montreal are medium sized city, and Vancouver is a small-medium city. Visit something like Tokyo or Beijing, and then you will stop associating Toronto with the word big.
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kkgg7
Banned
well, let's stop talking about "North America" as if it is a large part of the world. besides Canada, there are only two countries in North America, aren't there. Let's talk about the world. Boston itself is a small-mid sized city, as to Chicago, I think only Canadians will ever claim Toronto is more of a big city than Chicago.
You might think Toronto's urban development is "Crazy". It is actually pretty slow to me in some aspects. (10+ years to construct a subway, seriously?)
Tewder
Senior Member
Regardless whether you think the comparison is relevant to you or not, growth and development in Toronto are at an insane level in terms of a North American context, in fact in terms of the developed western world. Whether it pales relative to other parts of the globe or not sort of feels 'irrelevant' to me. The economies, demographics and social structures are so different that comparisons are almost pointless.
I would definitely agree with you that the development of public infrastructure in Toronto is painfully slow. The problem needs to reach a head and I'm not sure it has yet, though getting there.
adma
Superstar
Ultimately, to use Asian boomburgs as an acceptable barometer of "big" is like using the Parthenon or Great Wall of China as an acceptable barometer of "heritage/historical". IOW those who condemn us as somehow backwoods-deficient wind up making themselves more backwoods-deficient in the process...
junctionist
Senior Member
Toronto isn't less of a big city than Chicago. Just because a city isn't one of the giant metropolises of the world doesn't mean it isn't a big city. Ultimately, a human being with a pair of legs walking on the street will find the scale of a city the size of Toronto to be huge. It's a major metropolitan city and it has lots of commercial areas on streets that span the entire city.
Thanos
Active Member
North America is not a continent. The Americas is a continent. And it has far more than 2 countries.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
While I wouldn't go so far as kkg to dismiss Toronto as "not a big city", I do agree with him about the sleepiness and suburban-feel of too much of what should be central Toronto.
Yes, you can walk for miles through areas that are fairly vibrant and pedestrian, but your journey would take you through acres of semi-detached houses with front yards, and two- and one-storey commercial properties interspersed by the occasional gas station. You can visit much smaller cities in the world where after 2 hours of walking, you're still in an area hemmed in by 5 storey apartment buildings that come right up to the street, and all the resulting street life that accumulates from that.
That's not to say that Chicago is any better, but, frankly, why are we holding an American city as our yardstick of vibrancy and big city frisson? That's a "tallest midget" contest; like if Sub-Saharan African countries compared each other's corruption indices, or if we compared hockey players for their literary knowledge.
Tewder
Senior Member
You are forcing the 'sleepy/suburban = low-rise built form' connection way too far, which is why it falls down in Toronto's case. There are many low-rise areas in Toronto that are very urban and very vibrant... and in case you haven't noticed the unsatisfying gaps in the urban fabric are filling in at a dizzying pace.
Jonny5
Senior Member
Pity the poor Bay Streeter and their pain au chocolat deprived quality of life. It's a wonder anyone lives there at all.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
No, I really do think that the low-rise, detached home on a lot is an inferior urban form to the midrise apartment building that fills the property line. Toronto just happens to be the most vibrant city that has that particular form; we've hit a glass ceiling, though, and while the East Village and, say, Queen Street West may have the same stores, one is a linear street with some houses jutting off like tines of a comb, and the other is a neighbourhood where that pedestrian vibrancy extends in all directions.
You're right about the fact that the unsatisfying gaps are rapidly filling in, though. I wouldn't take an interest in this forum if I thought that the pace of Toronto's redevelopment was slow, and I wouldn't take an interest in this forum if I didn't think that the urban form being replaced was inferior.
Eug
Senior Member
That's one of the great things about the big city of Toronto.
Why not? Chicago is a big city. Toronto is similarly a big city. Hong Kong is a much bigger city, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there the rest of my life.
Irishmonk
Senior Member
City size designation has always intrigued me. This is my own personal chart, made up just now on the spot (with no wiki referencing). I suppose all city fetishists carry one of these in their heads.
City sizes: (agglomerations, not official municipalities)
Small: 50,000 - 500,000 Ex. Brandon, Kingston, London (Ont)
Mid-sized: 500,000 - 2 million Ex. Quebec City, Calgary, Portland (Ore)
Large: 2 million - 5 million Ex. Vancouver, Montreal, Sydney
Very Large: 5 million - 12 million Ex. Toronto, Chicago, Paris
Huge: 12 million - 22 million Ex. London, New York, Shanghai, Mumbai
Hyper: 22 million and over Ex. Mexico City, Seoul, Tokyo, Pearl River Delta
So, by my own reckoning, Toronto just makes it into the very large city group. Of course, many will disagree.
Eug
Senior Member
Heh. I took that ferry from Toronto to Rochester and back. On the way back there were a ton of Rochesterians taking in the Toronto waterfront as the ferry came in to dock. What I overheard from more than one person was the comment that they were totally confused as to why anyone from the big city of Toronto would ever want to go to Rochester.