adma
Superstar
No, but even if I did, I wouldn't be hagiographic about it being "home". Just as I'm judiciously critical (or at least cognisant enough) about Etobicoke, where I did live...
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Why the Hate for Mississauga?
- Thread starter Cooool
- Start date
No, but even if I did, I wouldn't be hagiographic about it being "home". Just as I'm judiciously critical (or at least cognisant enough) about Etobicoke, where I did live...
urbandreamer
recession proof
Some people love their "home." Others, such as myself, hate the home town life.
If you grew up in Clarkson Woods, Miss is arguably an interesting place to call home.
If you grew up in Clarkson Woods, Miss is arguably an interesting place to call home.
Dan416
Senior Member
I'm not familiar with "Long Island" relative to NYC, so I can't really comment on that quality.
As I'm sure I mentioned before, I grew up in Mineola West, and when people think of Mississauga they're not thinking of Mineola West or other similar old areas of the city. They're thinking of the suburban sprawl typical of where I live now. And when we moved here I hated it, and missed Mineola West with its tall trees, closeness to Port Credit GO, etc.
I'm perfectly aware of Mississauga as a large city. I remember our population being in the 300s, 400s, then 500s, 600s, and now 700s.
I just don't see how Mississauga will ever have a mythic quality to it when there's similar suburbs all over the GTA.
Tuscani01
Senior Member
Heres something to add to the conversation,
I was born in Toronto and moved to Mississauga before I could even remember living in T.O. I always lived in the cookie cutter subdivisions north of Britannia. I loved it because I grew up there. I didn't know what life was like downtown. I was able to stay out late at the age of 14, without the parents around and without a worry. I was able to walk to my friends houses or bike, and mobility wasn't a problem. Looking back, im still happy with my childhood being spent in the suburbs. I did go to school in Toronto for Kindergarten because my mom worked in the city and I would stay with my grandma, but every night after school I couldn't wait to get back to Mississauga.
2 Years ago I moved out of the house and into my own place in Toronto. While I love it here, I can actually see myself moving back to Mississauga once I am done school. City Centre and Port Credit are the two areas I can see myself living. Both offer a more urban lifestyle than other parts of Mississauga, yet are close enough to the suburbs I grew up in. If I do miss Toronto, its only a short GO trip away.
I was born in Toronto and moved to Mississauga before I could even remember living in T.O. I always lived in the cookie cutter subdivisions north of Britannia. I loved it because I grew up there. I didn't know what life was like downtown. I was able to stay out late at the age of 14, without the parents around and without a worry. I was able to walk to my friends houses or bike, and mobility wasn't a problem. Looking back, im still happy with my childhood being spent in the suburbs. I did go to school in Toronto for Kindergarten because my mom worked in the city and I would stay with my grandma, but every night after school I couldn't wait to get back to Mississauga.
2 Years ago I moved out of the house and into my own place in Toronto. While I love it here, I can actually see myself moving back to Mississauga once I am done school. City Centre and Port Credit are the two areas I can see myself living. Both offer a more urban lifestyle than other parts of Mississauga, yet are close enough to the suburbs I grew up in. If I do miss Toronto, its only a short GO trip away.
SP!RE
°°°°°°
I feel as though most people who are constantly on an anti-Mississauga tangent have spent very limited amounts of time there.
I will never forget how impressed I was-- felt like I was in another country in fact-- going up that main street (north south... umm Hurontario? It was with another forumer and I wasn't driving) towards the City Centre and I couldn't believe the effect... so many condos but in this traditionally suburban (spread out) setting. It was really cool actually, to see this new type of suburban development, which I almost want to call semi-urban. You can't get that same experience anywhere in Toronto.
I will never forget how impressed I was-- felt like I was in another country in fact-- going up that main street (north south... umm Hurontario? It was with another forumer and I wasn't driving) towards the City Centre and I couldn't believe the effect... so many condos but in this traditionally suburban (spread out) setting. It was really cool actually, to see this new type of suburban development, which I almost want to call semi-urban. You can't get that same experience anywhere in Toronto.
taal
Senior Member
Sorry, come again? Spread out condos? What are you getting at exactly.
What experience can't you get?
I've driven down this stretch you refer to many times, yes, compared to standard suburbs it's well built up, I don't understand what is special about it though?
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Have you never been outside the old city of Toronto? If you think condos and towers in suburban settings are unique to Mississauga, you should take a drive up Bathurst or Yonge or Don Mills or McCowan or...
doady
Senior Member
Yep, Mississauga and Toronto are actually very similar. What you see in Mississauga you can find something very similar in most of Toronto, as Toronto itself is also mostly post-war suburbia. So it's funny when Torontonians bash Mississsauga.
I suppose that a suburb with hundreds of high-rise buildings and 5 minute bus service CAN be considered just typical suburbia, if ones considers also the suburbs in the former Soviet Union or something. If the outskirts of East Berlin exemplifies the sprawling and auto-centric suburb, then perhaps Mississauga does too.
I suppose that a suburb with hundreds of high-rise buildings and 5 minute bus service CAN be considered just typical suburbia, if ones considers also the suburbs in the former Soviet Union or something. If the outskirts of East Berlin exemplifies the sprawling and auto-centric suburb, then perhaps Mississauga does too.
Kingsway
Active Member
The one thing Mississauga is really missing that would make it a REAL city (real in the spectrum of Calgary, Edmonton, Phoenix) would be a decent downtown core.
Compared to other burbs the Sausage has a lot going for it;
an international airport
a dynamic workforce across all sectors
transit
decent retail offerings
dynamic residential nodes - varied ethnicity, incomes, housing stock, etc
good highway access
...etc...
What the city really lacks is a sense of place. The MCC is a total joke. No matter what they do centering the city's cultural hub around a mall, C grade office buildings and condos will never work...it will never be a place people will want to walk around (Distillery), or where unique restuarants/retail will want to locate (Lakeshore in Oakville), public assembly will take place (other than Ribfest), etc.
Too bad they never intensified Streetsville into something other than drive thrus and tattoo stores.
Compared to other burbs the Sausage has a lot going for it;
an international airport
a dynamic workforce across all sectors
transit
decent retail offerings
dynamic residential nodes - varied ethnicity, incomes, housing stock, etc
good highway access
...etc...
What the city really lacks is a sense of place. The MCC is a total joke. No matter what they do centering the city's cultural hub around a mall, C grade office buildings and condos will never work...it will never be a place people will want to walk around (Distillery), or where unique restuarants/retail will want to locate (Lakeshore in Oakville), public assembly will take place (other than Ribfest), etc.
Too bad they never intensified Streetsville into something other than drive thrus and tattoo stores.
adma
Superstar
Well, maybe now it disappears a little more into the 905 murk. But not over the decades that Mississauga has become, well, Mississauga. It was the original high-concentration archetype of 905-style sprawl--maybe sometimes tonier (as in the south) or more "idealistic" (as per Erin Mills/Meadowvale). But in the 70s, it was "Mississauga" that became the byword for a certain ultra-suburban leapfrogging-beyond-Metro something in the GTA--all the more so, symbolically speaking, since there wasn't a municipality called "Mississauga" prior to 1968. It was, like, an entirely new glossy-eyed suburban fantasyland creation. (Interestingly, there's no other municipality in the GTA so "new-named"; even the name Clarington was a belated conglomeration of "Clarke" and "Darlington" Townships.)
And frankly, the way you're describing it as registering as "home" and oblivious to anything else, it sounds to me like you grew up in near-total entropy re anything potentially "mythic", positively or negatively, about what was around you--either that, or any such dwelling upon mythos belonged to the distant-to-your-household la-la land of 416-zone chattering class. In which case, maybe you're too Mississaugan for your own good, not being able to see the forest for your own trees--especially if you've gone from Mineola West to suburban sprawl in your personal living environment.
Trying to judge the kind of "mythos" I'm describing from your perspective is like trying to judge contemporary art from the POV of a Bateman-print collector.
Dan416
Senior Member
Look I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. I just don't see it. Maybe us Mississaugans just see the city in a more utilitarian way. How can anyone live in a place and think of it as "mythic". Clearly if you're there and living there, it'd not going to seem like a myth. The CN Tower could arguably be "mythic", but we see it often enough that it doesn't really inspire awe in us anymore. Occasionally you can take a step back and look up at it and be impressed, but on a daily basis, it's just there.
adma
Superstar
And maybe as per my argument, that "utilitarianism" is akin to being conditioned to viewing art in terms of Bateman prints and the like--something that's perfectly pleasing to the average eye and makes good home decoration, even if it's sneered at by big-city newspaper and art-journal critics and the like.
Of course, that judgment can itself be counter-judged. (But keep in mind that I'm speaking more of some abstract entity known as "Mississaugans in general", rather than you, specifically.)
bleeepbluuup
Active Member
What? You were only asking what synapses are triggered when you hear the name "Mississauga". Home doesn't necessarily mean "promised land beyond reproach". If you've grown up and lived there all your life it'd be home first and foremost, and suburban hell (or whatever) a very distant second. Of course we are able to think critically about our hometown, but that is not the question you asked (and that is not the question I responded to, anyway).
As for "too Mississaugan for your own good"... while it's true there are many things best seen from the outside, you do still need an inside perspective to complete the picture. No single one of us ever has the whole truth of anything.
adma
Superstar
Well, it may not just be a matter of whether you grew up in Mississauga; it's also one of how you grew up in Mississauga.
Sort of like me in central Etobicoke; I had the kind of family that got (and got me engaged to) the newspaper regularly and maintained, through family etc, ties with the downtown-core way of looking at things. Which was a distinct step beyond the entropy many of our neighbours existed within.
So call that inside-picture enough, with central Etobicoke serving as a Mississauga proxy...
old boy
Senior Member
They could name a hamburger after it.
The skyline was impressive though when viewed on a brilliant afternoon from the ROM's C5 restaurant. Also the panorama of the GTA looked amazing from the unique perspective of the high land on the Blooomington Road last week, east of the 404.
The skyline was impressive though when viewed on a brilliant afternoon from the ROM's C5 restaurant. Also the panorama of the GTA looked amazing from the unique perspective of the high land on the Blooomington Road last week, east of the 404.