Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
The difference is that for most people the menu of affordable housing options in Toronto is quite limited. Most people in Toronto cannot afford a walkable historic neighbourhood or a an attractive quasi-rural private large lot. So if they want urban they live in a dreary inner postwar suburb and if they want more space they go to the urban fringe and suffer a long commute.
|
Absolutely, which is why I said these folks are targets to be recruited for the move to satellite cities likes London or Kitchener or Kingston.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
Hakka cuisine is a good example to put things into perspective. It's the kind of specialized restaurant that has about a 70% chance of existing in metro Halifax. We have a few of them in Vancouver and Toronto probably has 2-3x as many. Hakka food is great but I'm a little skeptical that having 15 different Indian and Chinese restaurant types but not Hakka is that significant quality-of-life wise.
|
It's not make or break on quality of life by itself. But this is exactly the kind of difference that Hipster Duck was getting to. And I used that as an example, because it's one of those things I miss about Toronto when I'm away. Would I move to a city for Hakka food? No. Would having a Hakka restaurant make me feel a tiny bit better about a city? Absolutely.
But it's not so much access to Hakka food that is the problem as much as how bad anglicized Chinese food will be in a lot of smaller towns. It's borderline inedible to me sometimes. Eating that crap in say Portage-la-Prairie or Moose Jaw or Trenton as I have, only reminds me of how big the gulf between Toronto and the rest of the country is sometimes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
There's also an inherent bias in trying to hunt around for stuff that Toronto has without also approaching things from the other direction (e.g. you say Miami is lacking because it doesn't have Hakka restaurants but you don't consider Latin American food, which is generally kind of lacking in Canada). I'd expect it to have more variety overall than smaller cities but it does not offer everything. One important aspect of moving to a different city or region is adapting to what's available there.
|
The thing is, you are far more likely to find better Latin food in Toronto or Montreal than anywhere else in Canada. (And I agree that our options on this front truly suck, and I miss truck tacos after moving back from California.) So yes, you may not get Cuban food on par with Miami, but if you have any hope of finding an authentic cuban restaurant anywhere in Canada, it's in Toronto. If that kind of thing is important to you, than you either stay in Toronto or in a city/town that can access Toronto.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
It is not really the same everywhere. It's rare to find a metro without much sprawl in North America but some metros are 40 or 50% urban while others are around 0%. There is a lot of variety. I would argue that if you care about cities the existence of the urban parts is more significant than whether or not there are car-oriented suburbs nearby.
|
Can you give examples of a small metro that is 40-50% urban in Canada? Because I can't think of any. Subdivisions abound. At least when some of them had streetcar suburbs they were a bit nicer. But virtually everything built since about the late 60s looks the same in Canada and invariably are commuter neighbourhoods where the idea of mixed use extends at best to a small plaza with a Macs or 7/11.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I'd also argue that it doesn't take a very large concentration of people to make an urban area that stands out in North America (vibrant, big enough to explore a bunch) if it's done well.
|
Agreed. You can have a fantastic, vibrant city with 100k. But we never seem to aim towards that with smaller centres in this country What's Canada's equivalent of Portland, Maine? Everyone of our smaller metros grows with ugly assed subdivisions. I've held out hope for a few cities like Kingston and Halifax. But McSubdivision is starting to hitting them hard too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
Do the old walkable parts of Toronto even have 1 million inhabitants?
|
Old Toronto is at 800k and growing. East York is at 120k, if you count that as walkable. But there's also pockets outside the downtown core, especially along the Eglinton and Yonge corridors. And Toronto does seem to be growing more walkable neighbourhoods as time goes by.