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Not sure, I just checked and to me the urban core of Toronto is Spadina / Bloor / Church pretty much, which I remember to be pretty big, but looking at the map it's not that big. I don't know which european city it could be comparable with, maybe Milan, Naples or Madrid, which in the end also have similarly sized urban cores although every city is different. In Milan the center is pretty big in the end and might be bigger than my definition of Toronto's core.
I haven't been to LA so I don't really have a clear idea but it's often defined as the city without a center. I hope I can visit someday.
LA, like Toronto, is a bit disjointed where there is a dense and urban core and then really dense clusters with more suburban-like development in-between in pretty close proximity to each other. The differences are that LA has seemingly invested even less in mass transit and more in highways and that the larger sprawl out, while "dense" sprawl, is still sprawl that goes pretty far out. On top of that, the densest parts of LA can be pretty rough with pockets of deep poverty and other social issues. The densest, central 100 square km or so of Los Angeles has a comparable population count to the central, densest 100 square km core of Berlin, but that area in LA is riven with freeways and some pretty down and out looking places and far, far less impressive (but improving) mass transit infrastructure.
Not sure, I just checked and to me the urban core of Toronto is Spadina / Bloor / Church pretty much, which I remember to be pretty big, but looking at the map it's not that big. I don't know which european city it could be comparable with, maybe Milan, Naples or Madrid, which in the end also have similarly sized urban cores although every city is different. In Milan the center is pretty big in the end and might be bigger than my definition of Toronto's core.
I lived in Toronto for over forty years, and we Torontonians (well, most of us) defined downtown (i.e. the core) as Bloor Street in the north, Spadina Avenue in the west, Front Street in the south, and Parliament Street in the east, though Sherbourne Street as the eastern boundary for downtown had its supporters.
Toronto's challenge is that the City--that is, the pre-1997 City of Toronto, before Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York, and East York were declared part of Toronto--was shaped like an inverted T. The crossbar lay across the shore of Lake Ontario, and the stem extended north, centered on Yonge Street. This gave the city four natural areas: West End, East End, North End (sometimes called "Uptown"), and Downtown, as I defined, at the intersection of the stem and crossbar. Sounds simple, but it wasn't always. Broadview and Danforth weren't technically downtown, but they were close enough that they might as well be. Same for St. Clair and Yonge. Bathurst and Bloor weren't technically downtown either, but seemed like it.
Nowadays, I'd suggest that it is almost impossible to define Toronto's "urban core." As the GTA grows outward, people on the outskirts (Pickering, Markham, Mississauga, for example) tend to look at St. Clair and Yonge, or Bathurst and Bloor, as being "downtown." Heck, I've even had people tell me that Eglinton/Yonge, or Lawrence/Yonge (both of which are my old stomping grounds) are "downtown."
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