at a certain basic level, all single family housing is anti-urban - even old Victorians.....
No. You are applying a straight jacket to the concept of urban. Small towns, villages and yes low-rise, inner-city neighbourhoods can all be urban. It's not just about high rise density, if it were City Place would be some sort of urban ideal... it isn't.
I agree we probably should preserve some Victorian houses of the best quality in some areas, but in reality, there are simply too many of them in Toronto occupying too much valuable land very close to downtown.
A lot of UTers are quick to point to places like Paris and Barcelona as examples of exceptional urbanity... but let me ask you, how many single-family homes exist in the cores of cities like that? Answer - almost none... the truth is, it's the density from multi-family dwellings that is one of the underpinnings that has helped to create the urban experience that we all love in European cities (among many other factors)..
It seems to me that some here want to destroy the very fundamental things that make Toronto unique, that make Toronto's built form and version of 'urban' unique among other large cities, wherever they are in the world.
We used to take pride in Toronto as a 'city of villages'. We used to laud the quality of urban life that people could live here across the many inner-neighbourhoods of the city, while only being a streetcar or subway stop away from a variety of other urban forms (urban sky-rise cores, urban beaches/boardwalks, urban parks and green-spaces, etc). It was accessible, it was diverse and it was all at a comfortable human scale. Now this isn't good enough. Now we are either not 'Manhattan' enough, not 'Asian boom-town' enough, not mid-rise 'Barcelona' enough. Good grief! Guess what, we will never be any of those things enough! Toronto is Toronto and we should be making Toronto the best unique version of Toronto we can be, rather than some second-rate version of somewhere else.
There are still many, many ways that Toronto can increase density without sabotaging the fundamental character of its built form or urban form... and we've already seen many creative ways that density is being added without compromising heritage structures, streetscapes or neighbourhood character. The creative solutions that work are continuing to define Toronto's uniqueness, and continue to separate us apart such that when somebody from Chicago, New York or Barcelona comes to Toronto they appreciate that they've traveled to a unique city with its own urban identity and with its own lessons and ideals to show the world.
Bottom line: We do not need cookie-cutter solutions to urban development and city building. We need to believe in the 'local' and take inspiration from it... and we need to take inspiration from other places - ideas that work - but reinterpret/reimagine them in new ways that fit here and that contribute to our unique sense of place and self among the crowd. This is the urban Toronto I would advocate for.
In Barcelona and Paris (which happen to be my two favourite cities), most streets are lined with small retail because the density is sufficient to support that. These two cities function as if the entire city of Toronto are like the St Lawrence Market area., which I think is a much superior way of urban life.
Those cities respect and safeguard their heritage built forms, which is why they don't have many high rise towers or other incongruent forms of urban development. They embrace, celebrate and work with the urban forms they have. These are the urban lessons for Toronto, and not the specifics of their urban forms.
Also, you are complaining about Rosedale or Cabbagetown but most of Paris within the
périphérique is unattainable to all but the wealthiest in society. Diversity is disappearing there as rapidly as it is in London, New York and many other places you would cite as urban ideals. This hardly seems like a reason to destroy Toronto's unique built form.
