Toronto's "urban myths"

[christiesplits]

"Rouge Park is the largest natural area in a North American city."

 

[Transportfan]

Nobody has been able to come up with the 30km number independently. It's also not a standard unit of measuring retail.

There's no way the PATH retail is 30 km. in total length. The main north-south spine is only about 2 km. long and most of it from Union southwards has no real retail at all.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

There's no way the PATH retail is 30 km. in total length. The main north-south spine is only about 2 km. long and most of it from Union southwards has no real retail at all.

It might be possible - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

AoD

 

[TOareaFan]

Nobody has been able to come up with the 30km number independently. It's also not a standard unit of measuring retail.

There's no way the PATH retail is 30 km. in total length. The main north-south spine is only about 2 km. long and most of it from Union southwards has no real retail at all.

Ok then....but are there many (any?) other 4 million s.f. retail centres all underground?

 

[Johnny Au]

Ok then....but are there many (any?) other 4 million s.f. retail centres all underground?

The attached file is completely irrelevant, unless seat projections for the 2015 federal elections have to do with square footage in underground shopping centres.

 

[Skeezix]

The film crew that dressed Toronto to look like New York and a cleaning crew came in and picked up all the garbage while everyone was on lunch break

There might be some truth to that story. People who worked on the show Night Heat in the 1980s insist that City crews did try to clean up some of the garbage they'd strewn about. The story obviously got exaggerated over time, and has been applied to various movies that have been filmed here. For those with a TPL card, check out the Toronto Star, 26 Nov 1988, pg T8 ("Clean Sweep").

 

[TOareaFan]

The attached file is completely irrelevant, unless seat projections for the 2015 federal elections have to do with square footage in underground shopping centres.

thanks....no idea how that got there....have deleted it.

 

[the lemur]

"Rouge Park is the largest natural area in a North American city."

Largest nature park within a metropolitan area, maybe, since it extends beyond Toronto proper? It's 50 km2. What other parks within cities are that big?

 

[the lemur]

Great idea for a thread!

One thing commonly said of Toronto and specifically Cabbagetown is that it contains the largest intact Victorian neighbourhood in North America. I have never been able to find any actual factual support for this claim, which would appear on the face of it to be untrue when one considers the vast swathes of 19th Century buildings that remain in New York (Brooklyn specifically), Boston, Philadelphia and Montreal. Similar claims are made in Australia for Melbourne - which seem even more unlikely.

It's probably hard to measure what constitutes an 'intact' Victorian neighbourhood, but why would Melbourne be unlikely? It seems like they've preserved a lot of their Victorian architecture:

 

[Skeezix]

Largest nature park within a metropolitan area, maybe, since it extends beyond Toronto proper? It's 50 km2. What other parks within cities are that big?

I don't think it is the largest. A quick check of Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, shows that (sticking to North America) the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale is 112 sq. km. Franklin Mountains State Park in El Paso is 98 sq. km., and South Mountain Park in Phoenix is 65 sq. m. In Canada, the North Saskatchewan river valley parks system in Edmonton is almost 73 sq. m.

Having said that, Wikipedia also says that "Rouge is the largest nature park within a core of a metropolitan area in North America". (no source provided in that article)

Not sure how to reconcile those two articles. Not sure what it is about Rouge Park which (allegedly) distinguishes it from those others I mentioned such that it meets that claim.

If it ever is designated a National Park, it might be the largest national park within an urban area.

 

[the lemur]

I don't think it is the largest. A quick check of Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, shows that (sticking to North America) the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale is 112 sq. km. Franklin Mountains State Park in El Paso is 98 sq. km., and South Mountain Park in Phoenix is 65 sq. m. In Canada, the North Saskatchewan river valley parks system in Edmonton is almost 73 sq. m.

Having said that, Wikipedia also says that "Rouge is the largest nature park within a core of a metropolitan area in North America". (no source provided in that article)

Not sure how to reconcile those two articles. Not sure what it is about Rouge Park which (allegedly) distinguishes it from those others I mentioned such that it meets that claim.

If it ever is designated a National Park, it might be the largest national park within an urban area.

Maybe there's some arcane definition of metropolitan area they're using. Even if Rouge Park became a national park, Bayou Sauvage (national wildlife refuge) in New Orleans would still be bigger (but not as big as the McDowell Sonoran Preserve), and the Serra da Cantareira in São Paulo is still the world's biggest urban park.

 

[Skeezix]

Yeah, but these types of claims are always based partly on the splitting of hairs (e.g. "the world's tallest free-standing tower"), and I can imagine that, for the purposes of local boosterism, a "national wildlife refuge" would be deemed to be a very different thing than a "national park".

 

[Johnny Au]

Much of Rouge Park is in fact already used for agricultural purposes and Rouge Park is where Toronto's remaining active farmland is located.

 

[Transportfan]

It might be possible - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

AoD

I hardly consider the "coastline paradox" as being applicable to the PATH network. It's quite easy to measure if walking straight through it.

 

[King of Kensington]

I guess it's not an urban myth but more a commonly asserted statement: the TTC is THE WORST transit system in the developed world.