Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Allandale25 said:
www.yorkregion.com

Tunnel vision over Yonge subway extension to Richmond Hill threatens Markham neighbourhoods, critics charge

Thornhill residents, councillor, raise concerns over tunnelling under and possible expropriation of homes as a result of realigned route.
www.yorkregion.com www.yorkregion.com
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“They’re asking to tunnel under 60 homes in this mature, established neighbourhood and they’re failing to promise them with even a local subway station of their own,” he said.
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My word, the entitlement is breathtaking. For what this project costs, the only solution to this complaint is to buy out all 60 homeowners and tell them to go away. Maybe put in some nice modular housing.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Some of this stuff is very abstract and organic. I grew up in Willowdale and put that or North York on my mail. North York was already part of Metro, I rode the TTC etc so was certainly a Torontonian but these identities were pretty fluid.
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Why would you write Willowdale in your address? It isn't a city. Canada Post doesn't use it either. Just curious.
 
t54zhao said:
Some of this stuff is very abstract and organic. I grew up in Willowdale and put that or North York on my mail. North York was already part of Metro, I rode the TTC etc so was certainly a Torontonian but these identities were pretty fluid.

Why are Canadian suburbs so big and amalgamated relative to American suburbs? I don't know the history.

Why isn't Thornhill it's own little city?
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I don't know the actual history either but I suspect that it has at least something to with the US political structure which favours stronger local entities ('sovereign states') and filters down to matters within each state, possibly empowered by each states' constitutions. It also may be impacted by taxation laws, where some individual municipalities can levy distinct income and consumption taxes. Metropolitan areas are generally the exception rather the norm in the US. I'm not sure it's a system we want to emulate because some areas are an absolute hodge-podge of jurisdictions. The basic, sub-state entity in the US is the county but municipalities within them are usually completely separate (short of some manner of service sharing or mutual aid).

The UK, on the other hand has, over several decades, been gradually consolidating their local governance.

The only quibble I have with the way we do it in Ontario is that it strikes me as confusing. We have counties, regions, regional municipalities, single-tier, multi-tier, cities towns and townships (the distinctions appear to be meaningless) and some that have simply given up and call themselves a 'municipality.
 
t54zhao said:
Why are Canadian suburbs so big and amalgamated relative to American suburbs? I don't know the history.

Why isn't Thornhill it's own little city?
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I think, to the extent it's easily explained, @lenaitch got it.
Planning here is all about the Province. So the US has lots of un-incorporated cities and weird little structures, places that grew into their own little government. Here it's all top down. So, in the case of York Region, the current borders date to the creation of the Regions in the early 70s. They created nice little boxes for Markham and Vaughan and King and Richmond Hill etc., irrespective of the facts on the ground, so to speak. So if people in Thornhill have little in common with Woodbridge residents today, imagine 1970, when they were separated by a 40+ minute drive, nothing in between but corn fields and probably some factories along the rail corridor.

Thornhill was never an independent town; it was what they called a "Police Village" and it's centred on Yonge so when they created Vaughan and Markham, I guess they had to choose who got it and they did the Solomon thing and just split it in two. Probably if you dug through Provincial archives you could find some interesting discussion of it - I don't know how it was received at the time, but probably not well. There are definite differences between the 2 halves (for one thing, Markham did a better job preserving heritage houses) but, yeah, I think that's mostly why: only the Provinces can create municipalities so they rationalize them in the process.

yrt+viva=1system said:
Downtown Thornhill has lately been developing its own identity of being in the area of Bathurst and Centre St encompassing Promenade Mall. This is where a lot of high density development has been zoned, where a major bus terminal is located and on the Viva corridor. Thornhill (Disera Dr and Centre St) is roughly about 15 mins to VMC and 15 mins to a Finch Stations by bus.
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It'll be interesting to see if Langstaff Gateway actually uses that name when it goes to market, or to see if they call it "Thornhill Heights" or some variation. Lord knows subdivisions as far out as Dufferin/Major Mac have been trying to brand themselves as part of Thornhill...

afransen said:
My word, the entitlement is breathtaking. For what this project costs, the only solution to this complaint is to buy out all 60 homeowners and tell them to go away. Maybe put in some nice modular housing.
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I'm more sympathetic. If you read in the newspaper today that the Ontario Line, despite what you'd seen in previous maps, was actually going under your home - but don't worry, you won't feel a thing! - you'd be uppity too. It's Metrolinx's job to assure them it's not a big deal. I'm not in that neighbourhood so I'm taking their word for it, that they wouldn't have proposed it otherwise, but they certainly knew they'd have to engage with residents on this.
 
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US keeps municipalities small as much more (specifically education) is municipally funded. So wealthy suburbs refuse to amalgamate with poorer areas because then they will have to subsidize their education costs.
 
Transportfan said:
Canada Post doesn't use old local postal districts in Toronto anymore? In York Region cities they still do I think.
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I don't know how things work at Canada Post these days but I'm guessing computers just scan the postal codes first.

Why did I write Willowdale? I don't know :) But I don't recall having any issues receiving mail. If I lived there today, I'd probably just write Toronto (I generally use Thornhill the vast majority of the time now, only writing Vaughan if some system I'm using seems to favour it, like as it fills out the address automatically.)
 
innsertnamehere said:
US keeps municipalities small as much more (specifically education) is municipally funded. So wealthy suburbs refuse to amalgamate with poorer areas because then they will have to subsidize their education costs.
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The thing with York Region cities is that people think of the old communities as more like small independent US suburbs, due to them not being part of classic cities. Even government agencies (Canada Post) and Bell Canada still quasi-perceive them as such. Look at the communities still shown north of Steeles on the official Ontario road map for example:

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Funny that even the total nonentity of Concord is still on it while the huge North York is not.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Lord knows subdivisions as far out as Dufferin/Major Mac have been trying to brand themselves as part of Thornhill...
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They tried, and succeeded. I'm surprised slick real estate agents in Toronto don't try to market Jane-Finch as Swansea! :D

It's funny that in Mississauga, this never happened with respect to Streetsville, Clarkson, etc. People there know boundaries.
 
Transportfan said:
The thing with York Region cities is that people think of the old communities as more like small independent US suburbs, due to them not being part of classic cities. Even government agencies (Canada Post) and Bell Canada still quasi-perceive them as such. Look at the communities still shown north of Steeles on the official Ontario road map for example:

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Funny that even the total nonentity of Concord is still on it while the huge North York is not.
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I know we're getting on a tangent but it's a fun one. Concord is indeed the biggest non-existing community anywhere in the GTA. I've never met anyone from Concord, and it's a 5-minute drive from me.
No doubt academic papers could be written on suburban identity and how, say, people in Kleinburg and Thornhill perceive "Vaughan" and what "Vaughan" even actually is. Of course, that's part of the reason that Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Markham are now trying to create a new DOWNTOWN that will represent that singular identity; very different from traditional cities that grow from a singular centre that eventually gets regarded as downtown. No one in Vaughan thinks of Woodbridge or Yonge/Steeles or Keele/Major Mac as downtown. There simply hasn't been one, until VMC. Everyone just associates themselves with the historic centre, even if the part of Maple or Thornhill they're in is just some subdivision.

Toronto has its own issues, in terms of how much people from Scarborough and Etobicoke really feel like part of TORONTO but I think Metro gave those communities a few years to at least start to get to know one another. As I'm sure I said before, I don't think most Thornhill residents know where Sutton is, or feel they have much affinity with someone who lives in Mount Albert, even though we're all York Region residents. By comparison, the differences between Jane-Finch or Malvern and Downtown Toronto seem pretty small.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Toronto has its own issues, in terms of how much people from Scarborough and Etobicoke really feel like part of TORONTO but I think Metro gave those communities a few years to at least start to get to know one another. As I'm sure I said before, I don't think most Thornhill residents know where Sutton is, or feel they have much affinity with someone who lives in Mount Albert, even though we're all York Region residents. By comparison, the differences between Jane-Finch or Malvern and Downtown Toronto seem pretty small.
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The thing with Toronto was that the other Metro municipalities were never truly "cities" (despite their later status, which was seen as a joke by many) and none were ever historic settlements in their own right. They were just townships Toronto expanded into, with legit towns within them being absorbed.

In York Region, the urban-rural divide (on top of the suburban-city identity issue) is a thing and the region will likely never have any sense of being one.
 
Transportfan said:
The thing with Toronto was that the other Metro municipalities were never truly "cities" (despite their later status, which was seen as a joke by many) and none were ever historic settlements in their own right. They were just townships Toronto expanded into, with legit towns within them being absorbed.

In York Region, the urban-rural divide (on top of the suburban-city identity issue) is a thing and the region will likely never have any sense of being one.
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The Township of North York was created on June 13, 1922 out of the "rural" part of the Township of York. The Township of East York was created by January 1, 1924 because it was divided from the western section of the Township of York by the City of Toronto. The Township of North York didn't stay "rural" that long.
 
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