Toronto vs. San Francisco: typical inner-city housing (living, state, place)

[YoYoMa69]

I think this deserves its own thread. Which type of housing do you like more: the brick housing found in Toronto with ground-floor living space, lush front yards, and no garages or curb cuts facing the street, or San Francisco, with its ground floor of nothing but a garage with a door beside it, no lush greenery, and a curb cut that spans nearly the entire width of the property. The front door in San Francisco houses is often sitting behind a metal gate as well, as you can see in the first SF picture.

Toronto:







San Francisco:

[Alacran]

SF

Frontyards are just money wasters.

[munchitup]

Nice reactionary thread creation

Anyways I like San Francisco's more, but Toronto's is nice too.

It's funny how much you hate "curb cuts". They don't really alter the pedestrian experience to me.

[YoYoMa69]

LOL. You guys honestly think those San Francisco houses are more attractive than the Toronto houses I posted. What do you like so much about the San Francisco houses. Is it the garages facing the street, or is it the steel gate-doors in front of the actual front doors. Of is it the ugly stucco instead of brick that the houses are covered in.

Can you be specific about what you prefer please.

[YoYoMa69]

.

[sbarn]

Originally Posted by YoYoMa69

LOL. You guys honestly think those San Francisco houses are more attractive than the Toronto houses I posted. What do you like so much about the San Francisco houses. Is it the garages facing the street, or is it the steel gate-doors in front of the actual front doors. Of is it the ugly stucco instead of brick that the houses are covered in.

Can you be specific about what you prefer please.

Jesus man, get over it. People have DIFFERENT OPINIONS THAN YOU!!!! Yes some people actually prefer San Francisco's housing over Toronto's!! This topic doesn't warrant an entire thread.

[grapico]

Toronto, no doubt. Though all of Toronto and SF doesn't look like that. I don't think driveways have any place in the city actually, they were poorly designed. There are a few of them in my neighborhood, nothing like the amount in SF and they really screw up the street parking as well as walking or biking by them. You never know when a car is backing up or pulling out. I would imagine they have more garages there though b/c of the saltwater in the air messing up the cars. Most of the garages in Chicago in the neighborhoods that have them are in the alley and not front facing the street. Front facing garages in city look extremely tacky. I do like the victorian houses, but the lack of old residential tree cover and intersecting driveways is very annoying. I believe Toronto was built on much fertile soil though, the outside of SF was paved over in concrete, it wasn't very good soil to begin with.

"
“The “Significant Natural Resource Areas Management Plan” states that it was “maybe” like San Bruno or the Marin Headlands. Clearly, from what I read of early San Francisco, that is not the case. Sand seemed to permeate everything throughout the city.
“ If ever there were a location to place a grand city and do minor environmental harm,” he concludes, “S.F. was the place. To think that the nativists want to turn back the clock is so laughable that it is shocking that it might be reality.”


“If the plain truth must be told, the cove of Yerba Buena was a dismal thing to look on in those early days. The beach was right enough, but to the westward stretched a wilderness of desolate, forbidding sand dunes, often shifting their positions overnight. When one considers that many of them were 100 or more feet high, one can realize the uncertainties of the landscape. When the trade wind blew in fresh from the ocean, it carried with it an almost incredible burden of both fine and coarse sand that got into clothes, eyes, nose, mouth—anything that was open in short—besides penetrating the innermost recesses of a household. Only sound lungs were proof against the accumulation of sharp, gritty material daily inhaled. In fact the place long had the reputation for unhealthfulness, not entirely undeserved, until the leveling of the dunes and the reclamation of the park tract checked the shifting sands for good."

That is why you don't see all that much treecover, it was poor land to begin with, not redwood forests or anything that is in the rest of the bay area.

[slo1318]

You're out of control. The ultimate cherry picker.
Saying that.....Ive never liked Toronto houses, they seem very sloppy architecturally. There is tons of great revival architecture in US cities and Canada, but those have no historic significance or style, just hodge podge psuedo victorian....

Those are not typical SF either, they are one type or era of housing, and not all the streets look the same.

Love that first Toronto pic, with the "two face" house....

[slo1318]

And you are mixing two different time periods.....try these:

[slo1318]

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