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Planned Sprawl in the GTA

howl said:
Milton - too dense for automobiles, not dense enough for transit.
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I would say the new housing developments in Milton are a similar density to areas of Toronto built in the interwar period.

Layout, infrastructure and location are factors too. Milton doesn't have that many jobs, especially not mixed in among the residential areas. Local employment in the new neighbourhoods is basically limited to shopping plazas and schools with about 1/4 as many jobs as workers being pretty typical. TBH parts of inner Toronto have an imbalance of workers vs jobs, too, Ward 17 (Corso Italia area) is just as bad for that, and Ward 32 (The Beaches) isn't much better. However, those are still located quite close to downtown Toronto which has a huge concentration of jobs and is a very much transit oriented job centre.

In Milton, much of the jobs are the low density employment near the 401. And then the rest of the jobs are also accessed via the 401 in Mississauga (auto-oriented employment) or the via the GO station that's also near the 401, and apparently lacking parking. Plus much of the retail is near the 401 too. So every morning everyone drives north from the subdivisions and every evening they drive south. And mostly to places far away (outside Milton). Or to the low density industrial parks.

According to NHS 2011

37,455 people in Milton have a regular place of work
of those only 9725 work in Milton
24,575 people work in Milton (many live outside Milton)

So there's 9,725 commuting trips from Milton to Milton and 42,580 between Milton and somewhere else... a 4.4:1 ratio.

Because Milton is surrounded by undeveloped areas, any commuting trips between Milton and some other suburb will necessarily be over a relatively long distance.

It's probably going to get worse as subdivisions continue to be built further and further south with employment only planned around the 401 and east of James Snow Pkwy.
 
At one time, it used to be that people actually lived near (walking distance) their place of employment. Today, they ignore the distance and use their automobiles. Then they complain about the l-o-n-g commuting time. And really complain during bad weather (IE. snowstorms) extending that commuting time double or triple time or worse.
 
salsa said:
Milton — a snapshot of a region struggling with growth

In communities such as Milton, the province’s growth plan has neglected to align population increases with transit and other infrastructure needs, critics say.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/21/milton-a-snapshot-of-a-region-struggling-with-growth.html
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I love how they complain about parking at the GO Station, and how more GO station parking should be a top priority.

To parking! The cause of, and solution to, all of Milton's problems!

http://seanmarshall.ca/2015/12/21/miltons-self-inflicted-growing-pains/
 
W. K. Lis said:
At one time, it used to be that people actually lived near (walking distance) their place of employment. Today, they ignore the distance and use their automobiles. Then they complain about the l-o-n-g commuting time. And really complain during bad weather (IE. snowstorms) extending that commuting time double or triple time or worse.
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Better to have a long commute than no job at all. For double earner households, it's a question of finding a place somewhere in between the two jobs. Also people often don't have very stable jobs and even if they do it's common to change every few years and moving can be a pain, especially if you own your home and have kids. If you work downtown you might not want to raise a family of 4 in a 700sf condo...
 
I think with the changing employment landscape of higher turnover, more contract work, more telecommuting, more part-time and freelance work and fewer lifer jobs where you start & end your career in the same place, it makes more sense to live where you want to live as opposed to where your current job is.

Unfortunately, finances are a limitation, and living where you really want to live has become more of a dream than an option these days, resulting in the sprawl. That short drive further quickly becomes a medium drive further, which eventually becomes "only 45 minutes from Toronto!", which we all know is 45 minutes in no traffic and that's to reach the outer perimeter of Toronto, not downtown.
 
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Suburban Office Parks Increasingly Obsolete

From link:

What tenants want in an office building is changing, and the old model of the isolated suburban office park is going the way of the fax machine. That’s according to a new report from Newmark, Grubb, Knight and Frank [PDF], one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world.


Suburban office parks are losing their luster, industry analysts say. Photo: Wikipedia

The old-school office park does “not offer the experience most of today’s tenants are seeking,” according to NGKF. As a result, the suburban office market is confronting “obsolescence” on a “massive scale.” More than 1,150 U.S. office properties — or 95 million square feet — may no longer pencil out, the authors estimate, though a number of those can be salvaged with some changes.

“Walkability and activated environments are at the top of many tenants’ list of must haves,” the report states. Office parks in isolated pockets without a mix of uses around them must have “in-building amenities” — including a conference center, a fitness center, and food service — to remain competitive, according to NGKF: “If tenants are not going to be able to walk to nearby retail or a nearby office property to get lunch, they had better be able to get it at their own building.”

The study took a close look at suburban office submarkets in and around Denver, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. In the “southeast suburban” Denver office district, for example, office buildings within a quarter-mile of the new light rail line had a 1.7 percent vacancy rate. For those outside a quarter-mile, vacancy rates were nine percentage points higher.

NGKF’s findings don’t mean that office tenant preferences are in perfect alignment with walkability, however.

Parking was also important to the marketability of buildings in suburban Denver. The report notes that a lot of older management personnel prefer to drive, while younger workers want transit access. So buildings that offered both were in the highest demand.
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European researchers prove Jane Jacobs was right
Using an innovative mix of municipal stats and mobile phone data, researchers have shown Jacobs' ingredients for a vibrant city ring true in Italy.

See link.

If Jane Jacobs was alive today, she could say “I told you so.”
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A group of Italian researchers have given the urban planning icon a big present ahead of what would have been her 100th birthday: They’ve proven her theories correct.

In her seminal 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs proposed four ingredients for vibrant, attractive cities: Mixed land uses, small blocks, diverse buildings in terms of age and form, and sufficient population density.

The ideas became a fixture of urban planning policies in cities like Toronto, where she lived from 1968 until her death in 2006. However, her work has also been criticized for lacking empirical evidence to back up her claims.

Not anymore. University of Trento professor Marco De Nadai and his colleagues have used a combination of planning and smartphone data to show Jacobs’ theories hold true for Italy’s largest cities.

The researchers analyzed six cities, including Rome and Florence, and found neighbourhoods that conformed to Jacob’s ideals had higher levels of mobile phone activity, which they took as a proxy for “urban vitality.”

The areas have dense concentrations of office workers, urban spaces like coffee shops and cafés, small streets and historical buildings, the study concludes.

Jane’s Walk Toronto director Denise Pinto said it was “a beautiful coincidence” that De Nadai’s research was published so close to Jacobs’ centenary in May.

“When Jane wrote about her observations of the street, she was working from her own opinions and experiences. We often don’t look at those as rigorous, but we should. The way people experience their cities is important,” she said. “It comes down to how we all co-exist in this messy system of the city.”

The impacts of Jacobs’ policies are still evident in downtown Toronto, and Pinto suggested it’s time to apply the same thinking to the city’s suburbs – where streets are predominately designed around the car.

“We’re trying to understand what it would look like to retrofit suburbia to incorporate more of Jane’s principles,” she said.

Happy birthday, Jane!

Jane Jacobs would have turned 100 on May 4, 2016. To celebrate her centenary, a number of activities are planned around Toronto.

    • Take a Jane’s Walk. The organization is going all out for Jane’s birthday and will be celebrating its own 10th anniversary. Walks are scheduled for May 6-8, and anyone is invited to lead one. For more information, visit janeswalk.org.
    • Watch and learn. The New Urbanism Film Festival is coming to Toronto for the first time on April 21. The short film collection focuses on efforts to improve urban life, and many films reflect Jacob’s ideals. Films start screening at 6:30 p.m. at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave.) Tickets are $12.
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