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Originally Posted by CIA
What gives you the impression that I was just downtown?
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Read what you wrote. You specifically referenced the downtown core:
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It's a strange town with highrises rising from random neighborhoods all throughout the downtown core. It makes sense if it's a along a transit line, but these were just arterial roads that were not very walkable. Many of the new buildings in the core have sterile pedestrian realms and boring retail. Think drycleaners, banks, crappy variety stores, etc... - CIA
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Originally Posted by CIA
The city proper has many suburban style arterial roads. I was specially referencing my amazement that 30 storey tower would rise at random locations throughout the city, on arterials in North York and Scarborough. Normally, you would expect and encourage this development along stops on a metro line, but at best these were serviced by bus.. For the record, I was in North York, Scarborough, and on Yonge Street near Dundas Square.
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Toronto has followed a very different urban development than you'd find in the United States. Right up till the 1980s high rises seemed to pop up all over metro with little rhyme of reason to their placement. It still looks rather odd but they're providing the needed density to facilitate mass transit and established clusters on which to build larger 'nodes'.
The periphery has barely begun its intensification as it only stopped sprawling out about a decade ago. Intensification is mostly concentrated in the core and it will take decades before it makes a significant impact on the periphery. Eventually, metro will end up with 20-30 nodes. I (as do urban planners) consider it a huge advantage over US metros in the drive towards reducing congestion, travel times, and pollution.
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Originally Posted by CIA
I also near Yonge and Wessley (sp?). It was a community of high rise apartment complexesprobably built in the 60s or 70s. They were well maintained, but very much towers in the park, where consideration for cars came first, followed by pedestrian needs. It was walkable but had the same design characteristics of a housing project here in the north eastern United States. It was odd.
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I live near there and those towers in the park are very much a product of their time. Toronto grew much faster in the 70s and 80s than most places in the US and why the city has so many of them. We stopped building those decades ago.
Despite the construction boom, the downtown core has quite a big footprint. We'll need another 200+ towers before it starts to fill in. The city only started building tall north of Queen 7 years ago so an expectation that it look built out from one end to the other is unrealistic.
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Originally Posted by CIA
In New York and other cities along the east coast, there is a trend of gutting the ground floors of buildings built in the era of when the car reigned supreme and replacing them with a more pedestrian friendly environments, involving retail (a small grocery store) or other uses. The apartment neighborhood I was in seemed like they haven't been updated since the 60s since they were first built. But hey, at least the lawn was well manicured and the buildings maintained.
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That makes a lot of sense for NYC. We do see a few buildings on main strips like the Mink Mile re-configure their ground floors, but Toronto won't see that sort of thing on a grand scale till the core fills in first.
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Originally Posted by CIA
The retail at the base of the new skyscrapers going up downtown was just lame. Low ceilings, poor street frontage, and small areas usually no bigger to support a dry cleaners or subway restaraunt. So much missed potential.
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Like what for instance? There are some that have been a disappointment in that regard, but the vast majority of them have huge podiums for retail.
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Originally Posted by CIA
I know you guys think the city is the greatest and you think most Americans never heard of it, but really, it's not that great and next time I'll be heading to Montreal on personal travel as I've heard great things and no silly liquor laws. I can't recommend Toronto to anyone other than transit enthusiasts. I know dry counties in the Deep South with more liberal liquor laws than the forth largest city in North America. Which reminds me, your bars close too early, too!!
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Lousy attempt to depict your conclusions as gospel and people here as provincial types that have never been anywhere. I'm from London, UK have lived in Montreal and been to New York many times. I considered all 4 to lay down roots in. I chose Toronto and don't regret my decision one little bit. I'm hardly alone. A good 53% of people in Toronto were born outside Canada so it's one of the most cosmopolitan places on earth.
We don't all choose what's best based on the proliferation of easy access liquor. That sounds more like something a frat boy from Starkville, Mississippi might say.