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Wente: The war against the car will never succeed

Sorry, posting at work is always a bit rushed and I didn't consider the public housing connotations of commieblock, which may have thrown things a bit off-track ;)

The argument was that choosing to live in the suburbs is simply a lifestyle choice that people can change if they want to. I and others are arguing that not everyone has the luxury of choosing, and unimaginative2 above gives a very good reason why.

Not everyone can afford to live downtown, especially with a family.

Not everyone can afford to be picky about where they work either. It's hard enough to find a job in one's general area of expertise without imposing additional constraints on the search. Walking away from a job offer is not an option everyone has, especially if you're new to the country. The diversity of the GTA speaks for itself.

It's sort of like when the media go on about Toronto's car "addiction". It's hardly an addiction when often (if not most of the time) transit fails to take you where you need to go either in a reasonable amount of time or at all. So you "choose" to drive to work (assuming you can afford to), thus being lumped into the SUV-driving anti-transit Wente-supporting suburbanite stereotype, when in fact you'd prefer not to drive.
 
In fact you choose to spend $5000-$10,000 a year on a car year in and year out when you could put that money towards a more expensive house. One in an area closer to transit and/or work.
 
JoeyCuppa - I didn't say no one had a choice...your rant is misguided.

80% of people live in suburban Toronto. If they were to all try to move to somewhere within the old city of Toronto or a few other areas with good transit access (Kingsway, NYCC, East York, etc), the cost of housing in these areas would go up so fast and high that it would make Manhattan look cheap.

If we say that 2/3 of all jobs are in the suburbs and 4/5 of all people live in the suburbs, why is it so hard to understand that some people are just going to end up living or working in some isolated suburban area no matter what lifestyle they'd prefer - or both, requiring some awkward commute that can only be undertaken by car. Transit is great going downtown, impossible going anywhere else.

We simply cannot fit an additional 4 million people downtown or close to downtown without obliterating the neighbourhoods that make the city so great...it's never gonna happen. We also cannot fit another million or so jobs downtown...never gonna happen. Someone - many many people, actually - will have no choice but to live and/or work in the suburbs if they want to have a job and live in Toronto.

Just find a new job, you say. Or pack up and move closer to your job, getting rid of your car so that you have more money available for a more expensive house. If you can do it, then everyone can do it...surely I'm not the only one who can find flaws in this reasoning?
 
I'm sorry, but a person making $60,000 a year can't afford a $500,000+ home. It may surprise you, but that's considered middle class. A $200,000 condo is fine for a couple, but try raising three kids in there.
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A young couple I know recently bought a home about a 10 minute walk from Corso Italia. It was about $230 000, with a basement and 3 bedrooms and a nice little backyard, not to mention very accessible by public transit.

That you can only live in Toronto if you're willing to spend $500 000+ on a home is a myth.
 
^So then what? Accept the status quo and do nothing?

Yes in some cases there isn't much a person can do and in some cases people will subject themselves to whatever is necessary in order to live the suburban lifestyle. But in many cases people don't even have the slightest clue that there could be alternatives. Either they have been indoctrinated by pro-car, pro-suburb nonsense, like that preached by Wente, and baselessly believe that there is one way and one way only and that is the end of the story. Or in some cases they just don't take the time to explore other options.

Solutions and options exist, big and small, short and long term, to many of the problems suburban cities face. The big problem right now is that so many people are locked in either ill guided or righteous beliefs about their lifestyle that they can't open their eyes for just a minute or two and see that there is no need to just accept it.
 
It has nothing to do with lifestyle - 80% of our housing stock is in the suburbs...somebody has to live there!
 
No city in the world - none! - has the majority of its residents living in the central city. The whole point of a city is that it has a residential hinterland housing people who traditionally travel to the core for employment.
 
It has nothing to do with lifestyle - 80% of our housing stock is in the suburbs...somebody has to live there!
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Did all that housing stock in the center of North American cities stop people from emptying out enmasse from the 1950's onward?

And just because the majority of people live in the suburbs and will probably always prefer a more suburban lifestyle does not mean those places need to remain the auto-centric, unsustainable places they are. There is nothing wrong with having a car, its when the car becomes the only choice, which is rather ironic given that in an environment which preaches consumer choice and a multiplicity of options, in many aspects of day to day living, this doesn't really exist.
 
But it wasn't the centre of the city. Before the 1950s, Parkdale, Rosedale, Riverdale, etc. were considered suburbs. Toronto's population has grown from about 600,000 to 5.8 million. It isn't that people don't want to live in the historic city centre. It's just that even at Hong Kong densities, they couldn't all fit.
 
No one is saying everybody needs to live downtown. We're (or at least I'm saying) people should live close to work or close to transit that would get them to work. I bet employers would think twice about locating in the middle of nowhere if they realized they couldn't find workers that would drive to work.
 
Aversion to public transit has its roots in poor transit experiences. Unfortunately, I must return to the age-old argument that people will ride a GOOD public transit system because it is BETTER than driving in urban and suburban areas!

I have lived in Japan, as I may have stated before, and going to work (and everywhere else) there was so nice on public transit because it was fast, comfortable, air-conditioned, predictable, convenient, reliable and so on. The payment system was logical, easy to understand and fair.

Obviously for many reasons - not the least of which is density - we can't have the exact same kind of system as in Japan, but the fact is that a much better system would make riders out of more drivers.

I can't stress this enough. I had very little tolerance for transit until I lived there, but I absolutely loved the lifestyle it afforded me. Not to mention the fact that I had so much more money left over for good times because I didn't have a car.
 
Getting back to the original article the point is that Wente is not just saying "driving is not a sin" which it isn't, she is also saying public transit is a waste. That is the issue of concern. The point is that we should all be rallying for better public transit infrastructure regardless of the personal mobility choices we make or where we live. Other areas like optimizing our road infrastructure or investing in cleaner fuels should be invested in as well but they ultimately do nothing to reduce the argument for investing in transit.
 
"going to work (and everywhere else) there was so nice on public transit because it was fast, comfortable, air-conditioned, predictable, convenient, reliable and so on."

Keyword here is fast...as long as going across the city by transit is so frustrating, people will drive around the suburbs because transit takes at least twice as long.
 
^And as long as the suburbs are designed the way they are, crossing them via transit is going to be frustrating.

The issue isn't what percentage of people live in the suburbs, it's how the suburbs are designed and just how "suburban" they are.
 
Isn't the point of Wente's article ultimately that "smugness pays off?" I mean, here she is, "senior columnist" at "Canada's Newspaper of Record," laying down the point of view that matters, and everyone is yapping about it.

That's what it's all about: it's what sells newspapers, which is what sells advertising, which is what puts money in the pockets of the corporation, which is why they will keep hiring Wente, regardless of her clownishness.

I'm not saying that if you ignore her she'll go away, but I am saying that as far as her position is concerned, the more controversy she can be said to stir up, the better.

Rather than argue her points or her loony fringe views (sorry, I mean her "logical and correct take on society"), it might be more pointed to attack her methodology. For example, the fact that she found an eight-year-old interview with Peter Gordon, conducted by the american magazine "Reason," an presented a quote from the interview without citing the source or the date of the interview. In other words, she made out as if the research were her own, and was of a recent vintage.

For more on thismatter, take a look here: 64.233.167.104/search?q=c...=clnk&cd=5 and here: allderdice.ca/?p=146
 
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