[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by theman23

Marseille only has 800,000 people, but if you were just walking around town and didn't have an appreciation of Toronto's sprawl you might think Marseille is the bigger city.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

great place. I lived there for one month out of each year for 4 years. The dense urban fabric goes on way more than any city in Canada. Marseille has its problems too (pretty gritty banlieues, which are not very safe to walk around at night) but the dense urban core beats anything here by a long shot.

Originally Posted by someone123

It's hard to compare European and North American cities. Toronto is mostly highrise or detached house, with few medium-scale buildings. Marseille has tons of medium-scale buildings and they make the nicest urban districts. Montreal has a belt of in-between areas that are above Toronto but below Marseille. Vancouver's got almost no good medium density stuff (yes, I know about the 60's walk-ups of Fairview... they do not make for an interesting neighbourhood).

That midrise format is what makes for the most livable and walkable cities though. High density with towers can be as dreary as any cookie cutter suburbs if there's no streetlife at the bottom, which is usually the case with a lot of condos and aparments in Canada. Especially of the 70s/80s/90s era Towers-in-the-park concept. What makes European cities so attractive is the fact that their form is human scaled. Not too much is over 6-8 storeys tall. There's retail at the bottom. Blocks are about 100-200' long.

Originally Posted by someone123

Canadian cities seem to be on a different trajectory from most of Europe though. There must be some European boom towns but most of them haven't changed much over the past 10 years. Canadian cities were pretty dreary places overall in the 90's and early 2000's but the gap has narrowed. The fast pace of development adds some interest, although construction can be annoying.

Population growth rates are different. Canadian cities are a lot better than the 90s. I agree with that. But it's undeniable that we've done a poor job of managing a lot of that growth. It's only in the lack decade that density targets are really being upped and put in. We still don't do mixed use in most suburbs. But the housing mix is getting better.