The Boom of Downtown Toronto (real estate, 2015, rental)
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I watched the entire video. The creation of this forest of high-rises downtown without attending to and upgrading the condition of the public realm such as parks, squares, and pedestranized spaces, is a huge oversight that conveniently serves the interests of the developers who run this town. Imagine the uproar in the press, fanned by the self-serving development/financial complex, if the city insisted on carving out some sort of analogue to central park or a grand square/park combo smack dab in the middle of the city. Downtown T.O. may be a desirable place to stick some of your investment cash, yes, but a city without outstanding and easily accessible public spaces downtown, and not a 20 minute subway ride, isn't my idea of a great place to live. I find the downtown core anodyne, sterile, and kind of soulless. Flame away, but that's my verdict.
Heather Mallick makes a similar point in the following hilarious article:
Beautiful things, whimsical and delightful, are regarded with scorn in this Presbyterian and still too-Scottish city. Congregation points that have worked in Europe and Asia for eons, like squares and pedestrianized avenues, are virtually unknown here. Cozy squares or piazzas, if well designed, would work brilliantly here in a city that's enveloped in gloom for at least 4 months of the year.
I watched the entire video. The creation of this forest of high-rises downtown without attending to and upgrading the condition of the public realm such as parks, squares, and pedestranized spaces, is a huge oversight that conveniently serves the interests of the developers who run this town. Imagine the uproar in the press, fanned by the self-serving development/financial complex, if the city insisted on carving out some sort of analogue to central park or a grand square/park combo smack dab in the middle of the city. Downtown T.O. may be a desirable place to stick some of your investment cash, yes, but a city without outstanding and easily accessible public spaces downtown, and not a 20 minute subway ride, isn't my idea of a great place to live. I find the downtown core anodyne, sterile, and kind of soulless. Flame away, but that's my verdict.
Heather Mallick makes a similar point in the following hilarious article:
Beautiful things, whimsical and delightful, are regarded with scorn in this Presbyterian and still too-Scottish city. Congregation points that have worked in Europe and Asia for eons, like squares and pedestrianized avenues, are virtually unknown here. Cozy squares or piazzas, if well designed, would work brilliantly here in a city that's enveloped in gloom for at least 4 months of the year.
Hmm, let's see. So you want the city to carve out 843 acres of urban park land (current size of NYC central park) in a downtown core that has one of the highest population densities in North America? If this was 100 or even 50 years ago, I'd agree with you. But over 700,000 people happened to live in downtown and this was BEFORE the condo boom of the mid 2000s. So realistically, I'm just not sure how feasible it would be to spend hundreds of millions buying up prime real estate (and forcibly relocating tens of thousands) just to build a large urban park.
I have a feeling that this money could probably be put to better use in areas such as transit infrastructure... downtown relief line, regional express rail, or smaller more manageable projects sprinkled throughout the city for the enjoyment of everyone, not just those living in downtown.
Though on a more balanced note, I agree with your overall sentiment that the city could pay a lot more attention to beautification of downtown areas. And Toronto has a LONG way to go before it gets its acts together on sensible urban planning and transit infrastructure (god help us on the latter...). If you are interested, I suggest that you read the development news on urbantoronto.ca as they tend to have a lot more updated coverage on the exact type of projects that you are talking about. How about this vibrant pedestrian street and residential/shopping plaza on Queen Street West?
Redevelopment of Honest Eds, Bloor and Bathurst that's now underway, consisting of 19 mid-rise complexes ranging from 3 floors to maximum of 20 stories (all rental units) with street-level store fronts, and yes, a pedestrian-only street (albeit a rather short one).
I watched the entire video. The creation of this forest of high-rises downtown without attending to and upgrading the condition of the public realm such as parks, squares, and pedestranized spaces, is a huge oversight that conveniently serves the interests of the developers who run this town. Imagine the uproar in the press, fanned by the self-serving development/financial complex, if the city insisted on carving out some sort of analogue to central park or a grand square/park combo smack dab in the middle of the city. Downtown T.O. may be a desirable place to stick some of your investment cash, yes, but a city without outstanding and easily accessible public spaces downtown, and not a 20 minute subway ride, isn't my idea of a great place to live. I find the downtown core anodyne, sterile, and kind of soulless. Flame away, but that's my verdict.
Heather Mallick makes a similar point in the following hilarious article:
Beautiful things, whimsical and delightful, are regarded with scorn in this Presbyterian and still too-Scottish city. Congregation points that have worked in Europe and Asia for eons, like squares and pedestrianized avenues, are virtually unknown here. Cozy squares or piazzas, if well designed, would work brilliantly here in a city that's enveloped in gloom for at least 4 months of the year.
I agree with some of your views but others.
There is some serious lack of public spaces/squares as well as pedestrian streets in downtown Toronto. There is a lot to be done to make it a far better place, however I don't think downtown is just a place to you to investment you cash or the condosonly serve interest of the developers.
One of the best things about Toronto (essentially why I didn't want to leave despite all my complaints) is its highly vibrant and livable downtown. It is downtown, so we shouldn't have this unrealistic expectation that it will look like Rosedale with all the parks and tree lines streets. I don't know why people are so obsessed with parks when the city is full of them. Even in downtown, I can walk for less than 10 minutes to St James Park or Moss Park (not as nice but I sometimes play tennis there). Allen gardens and Queens park are not that much farther either. How much park space do we really need? Of course we don't have a central park (I wouldn't mind) and that won't happen, but if you want pure nature, go to the Toronto island or Mt Pleasant cemetery, all within a short subway ride. On the other hand, if one chooses to live downtown, life is very convenient to the extent you never need to drive or even take the transit. The jobs are here, the restaurants are here, stores are everywhere, and best of all, rent is reasonable. This is more than I can say about most if not all other NA cities.
The fact you find downtown sterile and soulless baffles me. If at all I find upscale neighbourhoods such as Laurence Park or Forest Hill where everyone wants to live sterile and soulless, because there is nothing but expensive houses and trees. Where is the soul, in those trees and grassland? The soul of a city exists in its people, how they have fun and interact each other, in the noises, the expected and unexpected events, the different choice of life style including food, music, retail, including all the nutjobs at Queen/Sherbourne, the vomits at entertainment district and even annoying homeless. In the white dominated suburbs like Oakville, everyone is the same, with the same income level and background, same expectation toward life, and same boring routine even Go train schedule. That's what I call sterile and soulless. Funny that people complain about ugly condos, like there are not far more ugly cookie cutter single family homes in the burbs.
I do agree the city is being quite cheap and utilitarian on downtown's urban design and hardly enough beautification work is done, and it is still too car centric with too may streets dedicated to automobiles but I am optimistic that more and more incoming urban residents will demand more. Some day Yonge will become fully pedestrianized, I hope.
As to transit, it is more of a concern for the suburban workers who need to come downtown to work everyday via TTC. There is not lack of transit within downtown itself I would say. Plus, when everything is within walking/biking distance, why the hell do I pay $3 on transit? I can probably bike to Woodbine beach or High park within 20 minutes (both about 6.5m km) and beyond that I can hardly imagine anywhere I would need to go.
I really enjoyed the video. One of the reasons why Toronto has many quiet tree lined streets with a mix of detached/semi and some row houses is because the rate of population growth during the late 1800's, while significant, was not nearly as great as in NYC or Chicago. For example, in 1860 Chicago grew from 112,000 people to 1.7 million. Toronto went from about 65,000 to 238,000 during the same period. If Toronto had grown at roughly the same rate as Chicago there would probably be less low rise housing built.
Toronto's advantage is that even with all the condos being built, there is still a lot of potential sites. Areas along Sherbourne, Jarvis, Parliament, Bathurst and Dufferin all have sections that could be made more vibrant.
I really enjoyed the video. One of the reasons why Toronto has many quiet tree lined streets with a mix of detached/semi and some row houses is because the rate of population growth during the late 1800's, while significant, was not nearly as great as in NYC or Chicago. For example, in 1860 Chicago grew from 112,000 people to 1.7 million. Toronto went from about 65,000 to 238,000 during the same period. If Toronto had grown at roughly the same rate as Chicago there would probably be less low rise housing built.
Toronto's advantage is that even with all the condos being built, there is still a lot of potential sites. Areas along Sherbourne, Jarvis, Parliament, Bathurst and Dufferin all have sections that could be made more vibrant.
Good post! Toronto will never have the same pre WWII stock that other cities in N.A have but the city Is in its groove now.. Its certainly an exciting time to be here.
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(albeit a rather short one).
