I think a lot of people, including those quoted in that article, think of "sprawl" too simplistically. We can't label all outward growth as "sprawl", and we can't label any upward growth as the "anti-thesis of sprawl" either. It's the outward growth outpacing the upward growth, the amount of land area growing faster than the population that really defines sprawl. In other words, "sprawl" is a verb, not a noun. It is the process, not the product.
Mississauga could have thought further ahead and done more to promote intensification, redevelopment, preserve undeveloped land for future high density, and get people using transit, cycling, and walking, but it's not like it didn't do those things at all. The problem is, Mississauga didn't do enough of that, and London shouldn't have much problem doing better.
I think probably the biggest thing that suburbs all over fail to do is build corridors for transit, to reduce the gaps between routes, and so reduce the walking distances to the bus stops. You can see this in the south part of Mississauga, which is almost devoid of bus routes for this reason. There are just no roads or bridges for the buses to use! South of Dundas Street, the only other local road that crosses the Credit River is Lakeshore Road, and that's 4km away, meaning a 4km gap in bus service. You can see this same problem in Vaughan, with Langstaff Road broken up into multiple pieces, and the York Region not providing their own bus service along the Steeles corridor, resulting huge gaps in the York Region Transit network, and it kills their transit ridership.
Permeability. That is the number one thing that separates the inner city from the outer suburb. Mississauga and Vaughan are not lacking in density. What they are really lacking is permeability, to allow for a complete transit network, and reduce the distances required for walking and cycling, including to the bus stops. I think it is the lack of permeability more than lack of density that makes Mississauga and Vaughan car-oriented and it is the lack of permeability rather than lack of density that will hamper their efforts to become transit-oriented. The newer subdivisions are much MUCH more permeable than the older subdivisions, with much more thoroughfares and many TOD measures, but maybe too little too late.
Even from just a cursory glance at a map, I can see the problem of lack of permeability in outer parts of London, like Westmount and Byron that are lacking thoroughfares. Probably not easy to take transit from Westmount to Oakridge even though the two neighbourhoods are next to each other. And on the north side of the city, there are the Gainsborough/Windermere/Killaly Road and the Sarnia St/Huron Rd corridors both broken into multiple pieces, so no chance to build transit corridors there. That's a four kilometre gap the Oxford Street corridor and the Fanshawe Park Road corridor - these are the only two major corridors north of downtown for London Transit Commission to use, and this will have a significant impact on how car-dependent or how transit-oriented London becomes as it continues to grow outward. Hopefully, London will do better with new subdivisions, as Mississauga has done with Churchill Meadows, but as I said, maybe too little too late, major permanent damage has already been done to the transit network in London as it has in Mississauga.
Thinking ahead, the long term instead of the short term, that's the most important thing. And maybe that's what really defines "sprawl". It is just about the present, it's not about the future.
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