The St James Town neighborhood has, and I quote, a 502% higher population density than anywhere else in the entire country of Canada, let alone the city of Toronto.
The deal with statistics is that if they are misquoted, or quoted out of the original context even slightly, they become not only meaningless, but can also be unhelpful to your cause (other than with gullible fools who will take them at face value… and yes, you'll find lots of people who will simply believe you).
For the record though, St James Town does NOT have "a 502% higher population density than anywhere else in the entire country of Canada, let alone the city of Toronto." (Another way to say it: "population density 5 times that of anywhere else" etc.
The Canada part is not that important. Canada is mostly vast forests and prairies and lakes and taiga or tundra, our cities are comparative specks on the landscape, so there's no point in comparing St James Town to the country as a whole. But just for the sake of stats, Canada's population density according to the 2021 census was 3.92 person per km². The population density of the central tract of St James Town (0065.02) was 77,543.3 per km². That's 19,781.454 times the national average. Yup, St James Town is stratospherically denser than the national average…
…but it's how it compares to the rest of Toronto that actually means something, and there are rivals for the high numbers in other parts of the city…
…like in tract 0062.04, bounded by St Joseph, Yonge, College, and Bay, where it was 70,156.4 km², and where there is a pile more population coming in approved and under construction towers (and more seeking approval as well).
St James Town has only 110.52% or 1.1 times the population density of that area…
…and in fact there are 73 census tracts in the GTA where the population of St James Town is less than 502% or 5 times their populations. So yes, St James Town is dense, but there are lots of other areas of Toronto within the same general realm of density. As tall towers continue to sprout up around the city, St James Town will stand out less and less comparatively and will likely be surpassed, possibly by the 2026 census.
The point isn't the numbers so much, but how well the neighbourhood is capable of handling them. St James Town has benefitted from new City facilities in the last few years, but it still needs more of them, its road network needs its gaps filled in, and many of its existing towers need reinvestment to improve their conditions. A multi-pronged approach is needed to continue improving the area, and the sad truth is that to get some of the building owners to fix up current buildings, they may only be compelled to do that through agreements with the City that allow them to further densify other parts of their landholdings. In this case, that's what the City should do: demand a slew of improvements to the existing building on the lot, including giving the current residents access to a pile of new amenities that would be part of the new build. There's no reason to leave the surface parking lot as surface parking; that does no-one any good. A well planned building in its place, and the parking moved underground, might take away some westward views, but it will be an overall benefit to the urban fabric and for hundreds of people who are trying to find a place to live in Toronto.
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PS: In a half hour search, I can't find anything that correlates to the 502% number. Did you just pull it out of thin air?
PPS:
Here's the 2021 census data by tract for the Toronto CMA