Is Toronto more similar to Los Angeles than to Northeastern and Midwestern US cities?

[giallo]

It was the hype of downtown LA's revival that made me chose to stay there when I last visited, and I wasn't impressed at all, but this looks a lot better than it was then. Granted, I was there during the week, and moved over to Redondo Beach for the weekend.

I had heard from LA friends that downtown was much worse than before due to COVID and the fentanyl epidemic, but that video shows a pretty active downtown on the weekend. Hopefully, it keeps improving, and becomes the downtown it should've been decades ago.

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

These are all true, but it's also noteworthy that DTLA's residential population has more than doubled in the past 15 years - from 35,000 in 2008 to 85,000 in 2019; its transit system (centred on downtown) has grown to be the second most-used in the US (though the city is still obviously not set up around transit the way that the older cities are), and newer, higher-end businesses have opened in recent years.

It looks like a fairly vibrant area on a weekend night at least - not a dead 9-5 downtown:

• Video Link

[Docere]

Anaheim and Mississauga have similar population densities.

Anaheim 6,899 / sq. mile or 2,663 per sq. km
Mississauga 6,391 / sq. mile or 2,467 per sq. km

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Zeej

I was in Milwaukee in October and it struck me that there were areas that very much like Toronto.

It's as if Toronto had been frozen in time in 1967. It was kind of fascinating.

I was there last Summer and I agree that it does look like a number of the photos I've seen of Toronto from the 1960s.

[Docere]

An interesting observation from Superman creator Joe Shuster, who spent his early childhood in Toronto but then moved to Cleveland. He actually thought Toronto was the more metropolitan city with a more impressive skyline even though Cleveland was actually larger at the time.

Shuster’s recollections of Toronto are happy ones, although he does remember his family having to move regularly, most likely when rent became a problem. Details are hazy now, but he recalls living on Bathurst, Oxford and Borden Sts. and attending Ryerson and Lansdowne Public Schools.

Joe was also greatly impressed by Toronto’s vitality and size, especially when he became a newsboy and began to get a clearer sense of his surroundings.

When, in the ’30s, it came time for him to draw the skyline and landmarks of Metropolis, Shuster dismissed Cleveland from his mind and turned instead to memories of Toronto.

“Cleveland was not nearly as metropolitan as Toronto was, and it was not as big or as beautiful. Whatever buildings I saw in Toronto remained in my mind and came out in the form of Metropolis.

“As I realized later on, Toronto is a much more beautiful city than Cleveland ever was.” Pausing for a moment, Shuster chuckles and adds, “I guess I don’t have to worry about saying that now.”

https://joeshusterawards.com/hof/hal...ast-interview/

[Wigs]

giallo, downtown LA has so much potential and bit by bit it's getting better as a huge number of residential, mixed use, and hotel projects get announced and more are making it off the drawing board and into the construction phases.
Every year like a good SSP nerd I check the progress through the DTLA market reports
https://downtownla.com/business/reports-and-research

I'm a huge fan of LA.
giallo, if you or anyone else like history watch the mini doc series Lost LA from their PBS station.
Start w/EP 1 Wild LA
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...feature=shared

My photos and about my trip

Back in 2019, I visited my brother and sister-in-law in LA county (San Gabriel Valley). At the time they lived in picture perfect Monrovia. A town that should be featured in Hallmark Channel movies.

Monrovia, California (2 min 46 sec video)
• Video Link

We took the light rail to downtown then switched to the subway at Union station to arrive at Pershing Square in the heart of downtown. It was pretty neat taking transit in "nobody walks in LA" Los Angeles

I followed as many recommendations for DTLA from YouTuber Josh of the excellent 'California Through My Lens' channel and it did not disappoint.
From the historic Mexican market Olvera Street and eating at a c.1933 Mexican restaurant, to a unique bookstore, the Skyslide at the top of the US Bank tower that no longer exists and the epic views from near the crown at the top, Grand Central market (Broadway), city hall observation deck. Months before pandemic it was a hive of activity. Although the historic Angels Flight was closed (we walked up Bunker Hill past a Hari Krishna fellow like we were in some oddball movie)

Photos



Near the top of 310.3 m/1,018ft US Bank (aka Library) tower




Chilling w/my Pops above the 262m/858 ft Aon tower


Looking down at city hall which was once one of the tallest buildings in the Western United States.


The Last Bookstore


Epic city hall


View from city hall towards the financial district cluster


On a trip to LA in 2018 I saw the famous Gamble house (Procter and Gamble family money) in Pasadena (Pasadena has some serious old money estates) aka the 'Back to the Future' house of Christopher Lloyd's character Doc Emmett Brown



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamb...na,_California)

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[Docere]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

What defines the characteristics of these individual US cities is that they tend to "specialize" in something more specific; and are often shaped by distinct boom-bust growth cycles

That's a good point. Toronto is very much a "generalist" or "jack of all trades" when it comes to economic structure. It's not the world leader in anything, nor is it especially associated with a particular sector like finance in NYC, entertainment in L.A., tech in the Bay Area or higher education in Boston. Largely because it has to, be given its role in Canada.

In terms of economic structure, Chicago might be the city that most closely resembles Toronto, in part because it's sort of a "generalist" as well. The share employed in manufacturing in the two alpha cities of the Great Lakes is basically identical in both (8%).

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Docere

That's a good point. Toronto is very much a "generalist" or "jack of all trades" when it comes to economic structure. It's not the world leader in anything, nor is it especially associated with a particular sector like finance in NYC, entertainment in L.A., tech in the Bay Area or higher education in Boston. Largely because it has to, be given its role in Canada.

Actually, Toronto is the world leader in at least one thing: the global mining industry. And not by a small margin either.

https://springmag.ca/why-canada-is-a...ing-atrocities

[Docere]

Yes, Bay Street is the leading center for mining capital. And Northern Ontario mining wealth is part of the story of Toronto's ultimate hegemony in Canada. Nobody really associates Toronto with mining though (because there are few if any actual miners here!). Maybe we should be thankful for that, given its (rightfully deserved) reputation.

Nor is this to say that Los Angeles for example doesn't have a "balanced" economy, it clearly does. But Hollywood obviously looms large in L.A. even if the number of people who are employed in is a very small percentage of the workforce.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ For sure. Greater LA is also one of the world's biggest manufacturing hubs but few people associate it with that. Perception definitely doesn't always match reality.

[Docere]

L.A. has the highest number of manufacturing workers of any US/Canadian city in fact.

Manufacturing employment:

Los Angeles 476,000 7.2%
Chicago 409,000 8.5%
New York 353,000 3.4%
Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa 321,000 8.1%


Remarkable how low the share is in the NYC region, there are nearly as many manufacturing workers in the GTHA.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Wigs

giallo, downtown LA has so much potential and bit by bit it's getting better as a huge number of residential, mixed use, and hotel projects get announced and more are making it off the drawing board and into the construction phases.
Every year like a good SSP nerd I check the progress through the DTLA market reports
https://downtownla.com/business/reports-and-research

I'm a huge fan of LA.
giallo, if you or anyone else like history watch the mini doc series Lost LA from their PBS station.
Start w/EP 1 Wild LA
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...feature=shared

I love LA as well. I think that's why I'm extra hard on DTLA. It has so much potential to be one of the best downtowns on the continent.

Great pics and tour, Wigs. I did a death march with my wife where we started from DTLA and walked to West Hollywood via Melrose. I have no idea what we were thinking, but it was a great way to see a chunk of LA proper. It took 7 1/2 hours though.





































































The very beginning of Melrose Ave

[Wigs]

Damn. You covered a lot of ground by foot!
Thanks for the photo tour

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

^ For sure. Greater LA is also one of the world's biggest manufacturing hubs but few people associate it with that. Perception definitely doesn't always match reality.

I think part of the reason is most people don't realize the size of LA.
City of Los Angeles is ~4 million people
LA County is ~10 million
Greater Los Angeles (~18.4M) will be approaching 19 million in the future, or currently about 45% of the entire population of Canada in 2023.

The UA, urbanized area that Chicago forumer, Steely Dan and myself think is an accurate measurement of a city's true size is almost 12.3 million.
It's on a scale that Toronto won't match in our lifetime.

According to this recently posted thread on GDP of US Metropolitan areas, LA has a GDP of $1.22T USD or $1.66 Trillion CAD.
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=257009

[Docere]

Los Angeles is humungous. The population of Los Angeles and Orange Counties and the Inland Empire is half that of all of Canada.

[niwell]

LA is near the top of my list for major cities I haven't spent time in (visited for a day longggg ago). Thankfully a friend of ours in the music industry goes frequently and knows lots of good spots. Thinking of it, I suppose that's one similarity to Toronto - it seems like a hard city to get the vibe of if you don't know where to go. Outside of obvious tourist stuff which I have a limited interest in.

Also neither city really has a signature food, and if they did it's arguably more of a modern creation (peameal bacon sandwiches notwithstanding I guess). I've heard kalbi beef tacos for LA and I've maintained East Indian style roti wraps for Toronto.

[Docere]

In addition to the Great Migration, rust belt and shift to the sunbelt occurring to the divergence between Toronto/Ontario and the US Great Lakes states, I'd point to two other factors that haven't yet been mentioned.

The first is metropolitan government in the 1950s. This leads to more of a regional focus and less balkanization between city and suburb (some smaller, less rusty Midwestern cities like Indianapolis and Columbus have annexations). Toronto is unique in having a two-tier government.

The second is the very strong urban reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Keeping the old City of Toronto intact played a role here. The city was small enough and the inner city was desirable or intact enough to have reform-minded professionals play a powerful role. This group is very committed to a high quality of urban life. I'm thinking of the successful stopping of the against the Spadina Expressway and the mayorships of David Crombie and John Sewell. It's interesting to speculate on what would have happened if Toronto had done full annexation in the 1950s.

[Luisito]

Originally Posted by niwell

Also neither city really has a signature food, and if they did it's arguably more of a modern creation (peameal bacon sandwiches notwithstanding I guess). I've heard kalbi beef tacos for LA and I've maintained East Indian style roti wraps for Toronto.

I would say the traditional tacos de asada with horchata that you can get almost on every corner in LA would be the signature food. Specially if you're going to say the Indian roti is the food of Toronto. LA is much more Mexican than Toronto is Indian.

[MolsonExport]

Is Toronto more similar to Belleville or to Woodstock?

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Luisito

I would say the traditional tacos de asada with horchata that you can get almost on every corner in LA would be the signature food. Specially if you're going to say the Indian roti is the food of Toronto. LA is much more Mexican than Toronto is Indian.

I was thinking more of unique new foods, not what's ubiquitous. For Toronto that would likely be Jamaican patties, which can be found at many convenience stores and subway stations. The roti I mentioned is specifically a combination of Trinidadian style roti with East Indian filling and I remember an old NYT article saying it originated here - it's certainly been around a couple decades and may have started at Gandhi Roti. They have a similar dish in Durban but that's the only place I've really seen it be common (though apparently it is in Queen's now too).

EDIT: here's an article https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...ingh-1.5620328

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Luisito

I would say the traditional tacos de asada with horchata that you can get almost on every corner in LA would be the signature food. Specially if you're going to say the Indian roti is the food of Toronto. LA is much more Mexican than Toronto is Indian.

It's hard to compare since there are still existent Mexican restaurants in LA like on Olvera street that date back to the 1920s/1930s and LA was Mexican from the roots, whereas South Asian migration to Toronto is more of a post War development and post 1970s one at that.