Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Would people be opposed to something like this but much shorter on Lakeshore? Or indeed like Mt.Pleasant and Crescent Road for the through lanes?
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Would people be opposed to something like this but much shorter on Lakeshore? Or indeed like Mt.Pleasant and Crescent Road for the through lanes?
CDL.TO
Moderator
There is a good chance that a new boulevard wouldn't be the greatest space for pedestrians. But I'm completely confident that 20 years from now, even if we're complaining about how much "Gardiner Boulevard" sucks, that no one will be claiming that the space would be improved if they added an elevated expressway to it.
Lake Shore between Leslie and Coxwell is busy and has some relatively high speed traffic. But I'm 110% sure that adding an elevated expressway to the mix wouldn't make the urban environment better.
Lake Shore between Leslie and Coxwell is busy and has some relatively high speed traffic. But I'm 110% sure that adding an elevated expressway to the mix wouldn't make the urban environment better.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
This looks like a pretty great experience for pedestrians:
nfitz
Superstar
The Champs-Élysées for those who wonder. (that red-double decker is a red herring!).
There's numerous examples in modern Asian cities as well. Quite frankly, if you avoid the 2-phase pedestrian crossings, and eliminate the lanes short-cutting the corners, it's probably fine even at a 12-lane cross-section.
salsa
Senior Member
Montreal built so many highway that they could be mistaken as an American city. I'm surprised that the downtown is as vibrant as it is given that most US cities have destroyed their streetlife thanks to their freeway binge. I wonder why things turned out differently for Montreal?
denfromoakvillemilton
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Canadians love the urban lifestyle more. It's only recently that Americans have flocked back to cities. And it's because they suburbs were not all they were cracked up to be.
And provide wide enough sidewalks and trees and interesting things to do. The pedestrian experience there isn't so much about crossing a wide road but about all the things there are to do beside the road. Lake Shore isn't even close, even where it isn't beneath the Gardiner. Currently, it's not very pleasant walking along Lake Shore from Bathurst to Spadina, for example because there's no buffer from the traffic. In the photo of the Champs, the trees provide that buffer, and the sidewalks are hugely wide, making the road itself much less intrusive on the pedestrian experience.
Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Montreal's urban highways are for the most part, out of the way from their downtown core.
American cities have highways cutting through their downtown core, and sitting between them and their waterfronts.
aquateam
Active Member
Well, Montreal isn't doing as well as Toronto, but it's doing much better than American cities. There's a hollowing out of downtown compared to Toronto and there's a big amount of sprawl.
I think one factor with American cities that doesn't really apply to Canadian cities is the phenomenon of white flight, which would aggravate the trend to suburbanization. Plus Canadians never really embraced the automobile as much as Americans.
nfitz
Superstar
The population changes you see in Montreal aren't hollowing out or dehumanization. They are simply smaller families living in the same dwellings. In some cases converting duplexes into single-family dwellings. It's not like you have the vacant properties you see in many US cities. You see similar trends in some Toronto neighbourhoods as well - but not as pronounced, as I don't think families here were ever quite as large or the density as high. You also see more infill densification in Toronto - and in that way Toronto may well be doing better - but it's not Montreal hollowing out. You also don't have as much urban sprawal in Montreal as you do in Toronto; you certainly have it in Montreal, but not as bad as Toronto ... and no where near like US cities. In both Toronto and Montreal it's primarily driven by population growth - not deurbanization.
True ... and we've had a lot more post-war planning controls in the areas surrounding Toronto and Montreal, which don't exist in many US cities. Many of US cities that have done the best, are geographically-constrained (rather than planning-constrained).
Not sure I buy that one.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Look at the transit modal share of major Canadian cities compared to American cities of similar size. The Canadians have significantly higher share. 2 of the top 5 most used rapid transit systems in North America are in Canada, even though canada represents only 7% of the continent's population.
denfromoakvillemilton
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So getting back on track, like I asked before: Why can't we get rid of the whole gardiner expressway?
diminutive
Active Member
Very true. Even in the US, the cities held up as champions of urban vitality (e.g. Seattle, Portland, San Fran, Minneapolis) never had the African American population and resulting issues around white-flight.
Toronto's downtown also benefited from some seemingly random, or at least unplanned, developments.
1.) Downtown has several post secondary institutions (UofT, Ryerson, OCAD, GBC). These bring tons of people into downtown every day. In most US states, much more of this happens in college towns. Those towns, not surprisingly, happen to have lots of the livability that Toronto prides itself on.
2.) Big government presence. Most American states don't have their capital in their largest city. The net result is to put lots of high-paying, white collar jobs in smaller state capitals. Toronto's also a bit unique in that QP is actually a very large government by North American standards. Amongst sub-national governments, Ontario's probably just behind California, New York and Texas in terms of total spending and well ahead of similarly sized states like Ohio or Illinois.
3.) The country's capital markets happen to be here, and for some reason that's one of the few industries where firms are willing to pay premium rents for central office space (transactional efficiencies from being close?). Not every city can have one and most of the activity in the US has been consolidated in Manhattan and Chicago.
That's hardly an exhaustive list. Torontonians can be a little self congratulatory on the vitality of downtown vis a vis the US and attribute that success to seemingly random things (e.g. lack of highways). If you adjusted for those three industries, and the support services they rely on, Toronto's CBD employment share would be pretty close to any other US city.
Neil
Active Member
politicos n vertebrates = {}
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ssiguy2
Senior Member
Why did US cities suffer and Canadian ones didn't? Well there are a lot of similarities but there is one big difference that American cities had to deal with and Canadian cities didn't..........................race.
Any way. I can't understand why the side advocating a tear-down doesn't make it very clear that the "hybrid" option is none of the sort. I think the average person still thinks the hybrid means getting the Gardiner away from the Waterfront to essentially run parallel and beside the rail corridor and comes with a free ST station at Unilever. The current hybrid option is not the hybrid most people think it is and is just the original "do nothing" plan which is the one most people don't want.
Any way. I can't understand why the side advocating a tear-down doesn't make it very clear that the "hybrid" option is none of the sort. I think the average person still thinks the hybrid means getting the Gardiner away from the Waterfront to essentially run parallel and beside the rail corridor and comes with a free ST station at Unilever. The current hybrid option is not the hybrid most people think it is and is just the original "do nothing" plan which is the one most people don't want.