Transportfan
Senior Member
That's my point: downtown Manhattan, downtown Chicago, downtown Toronto are safe. It's the suburbs that are becoming scary.
The South Bronx is hardly suburban.
That's my point: downtown Manhattan, downtown Chicago, downtown Toronto are safe. It's the suburbs that are becoming scary.
It can be very refreshing to see the viewpoints from our peer cities, where they see the good from the bad and can offer simple ways in which we can improve.
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I can't believe that people here are equating Toronto's suburbs with the really scary areas that exist elsewhere.
I'll walk down Jane Street from Steeles south at night, no problem or through Regent Park.
I've walked through Downtown Detroit at night after a Tigers game. I have walked (in daylight hours) through some sketchy areas (by Detroit standards), and drove through very "scary" areas. I've taken public transit in Baltimore, South Side LA, Detroit (both D-DOT and SMART). Though I would not take up an offer to walk through parts of Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington or LA at night, though my tolerance point is much higher than average. It's when you get lost in these areas, and don't know where you are going can things feel scary at all.
From the Post:
Californians see Toronto the Good
Sarah Karlinsky, National Post
Published: Monday, August 18, 2008
The current issue of Urbanist, the monthly magazine of the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association, is themed ''Learning From Toronto,'' a mostly upbeat survey of our city. The package is introduced with the following column:
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At first glance, Toronto is not a beautiful city. As Toronto's former chief planner and current "urban mentor" Paul Bedford explained to us on our first night in Toronto, the city is about "business first, not about beauty first." But, he went on to say, it's a city that has "good bones."
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=730520
AoD
True though it may be it really depresses me to see Toronto described in this way. 'Ugly but with good bones'. Good lord, it sounds like the sweet but homely girl your mother would try to set you up with. This is all the more depressing when you think how little a make-over would suffice to make her a little more hot and sexy.
True though it may be it really depresses me to see Toronto described in this way. 'Ugly but with good bones'.
I don't think anyone called the place ugly.
There are parts of the city that are really quite visually attractive, and others that have a character that makes them attractive if one has an affinity to the qualities found in those places..
I find stretches of Queen hard on the eye, but I wouldn't want to change them for that reason alone. Once one actually sees what's along the street, the look starts to feel appropriate. Then again, I find carved up side-walks, dead trees and tilting poster-covered utility poles in the downtown core idiotic. It makes the city look uncared for.