Toronto has 158 officially defined neighborhoods, so an average of roughly 20,000 on average. There were 140 that were set in the 90s but recently 18 new ones were created.
https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/d...neighbourhood/#location=&lat=&lng=&zoom=
In terms of reflecting the reality of how things are, they're a bit contrived and a lot of people don't identify with the "official" ones. These are based on census tracts and an official neighborhood for statistical purposes, so very small neighborhoods are included with larger ones.
In terms of neighborhood identity, there are several core neighborhoods that have had long, enduring identities and are pretty well-defined areas such as the Annex, the Beaches, the Junction, Parkdale, Riverdale and Rosedale. But there's a lot of BIA or realtor creations that ended up becoming "accepted" as well, such as Bloor West Village and Roncesvalles. Still a lot of others are just administrative names as there's no "obvious" names or consistent use, like "East End-Danforth", "Greenwood-Coxwell", "Palmerston-Little Italy", "Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson-Junction" etc.
Some cities I'm aware use something quite a bit bigger for planning purposes, such as the famed Community Areas created by the University of Chicago. I believe NYC uses the 59 community districts as the local statistical unit.
Threaded Mode