Urban Core Rankings: Boston, San Francisco, Toronto, DC, Minneapolis (state, largest, Atlanta)

[Mr. Burns]

Originally Posted by Enean

Your comment is exactly why I posted....what I posted. I couldn't have asked for a better post, to follow mine.

Well it's the truth. If you don't want to hear it, compare cities within their own leagues.

[Enean]

Originally Posted by Mr. Burns

Well it's the truth. If you don't want to hear it, compare cities within their own leagues.

My point, exactly. I didn't start this thread, and I stand by everything I wrote in my previous post.

[DavePa]

Originally Posted by Enean

My point, exactly. I didn't start this thread, and I stand by everything I wrote in my previous post.

I'm just glad its not Chicago or Philly in the mix again. Time for LA of Houston, Atlanta and Seattle. LA is bigger and the others smaller. But in reality. They feel a surpassing in stature, vibrancy and growth to all. I almost did a thread on will Houston ever surpass Toronto's population since a poster here once declared .... never. But I say let them do it.

I just don't know what happened to the SF folk to uphold their city. One I saw recently banned. Why it is getting lower then expected votes in most threads.

Maybe a thread? How does Toronto.... not beat your city? Not named NYC.

[North 42]

I find it's an exercise in futility to even bother to try to debate anything Toronto or Canada based with NOLA 101 and a couple of other well known Toronto/Canada haters on this site. It's like talking to a brick wall, regardless of the proven facts that are put out there, they will always dispute them, and then show their own blatant ignorance for all to see, with their ridiculous attempts at a rebuttal!

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

He basically picked one of the most boring office districts (Bay & Bloor) and used that to generalize the whole city. Sorry, but taking trip on Google Maps doesn't qualify as having actually lived and experienced a city.

Your post actually reinforces all my points.

First, you're not being truthful. I never posted any "office district". I posted the Bloor-Yonge area in Yorkville. It's the premiere shopping district and most elegant street in all of Canada, and I posted it specifically to compare to its equivalents in Boston, DC, SF (and for that matter Philly and Chicago).

I think almost all reasonable people will agree that Newbury Street, Michigan Ave., Walnut St., Connecticut Ave., etc. are much nicer than Bloor Street, That was my only point. These are older, historically much wealthier cities with better prewar fabric, and their "showplace" upscale shopping corridors are much nicer looking. Toronto has FAR more condo towers of recent vintage, but little prewar fabric of note.

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

Sure Toronto has a ton of brutalist architecture from the 60s, 70s, and 80s - large apartment and office blocks built to accommodate a large number of people.

And these other cities don't. That was my second point. Toronto came of age during an awful period of architecture, while these other cities came of age in the prewar era.

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

One street behind those brutalist architecture on Bloor you have this:

And this:

And this (Four Seasons Flagship Hotel and Global HQ):

Yes, and this reinforces my argument. Yorkville, the premiere in-town wealthy neighborhood in Canada, clearly looks a lot worse than its U.S. equivalents. No reasonable person would compare with places like Beacon Hill, Gold Coast or Dupont Circle, at least in terms of architecture and streetscape. There is almost nothing of architectural note in Yorkville.

Toronto is a prosperous and booming city but kinda ramshackle, even in its wealthiest corridors. It doesn't do things like parks and sidewalks and building facades particularly well. Yorkville is seriously lacking in charm, and almost everything dates from the 1970's or more recent. Montreal generally has much nicer prewar areas.

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

Dude also seem to have forgotten Queen West (one of the longest continuous urban retail streets in North America, and the longest urban streetcar line in the world at 15.4 miles)

Queen West is architecturally unimpressive and boring in the core. It's much better west of downtown, and certainly vibrant and interesting but is hardly notable. Every thriving city has a Queen West.

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

Or Spadina Chinatown:

Toronto's downtown Chinatown is rather weak, and has pretty bad architecture/streetscape. The main street feels like a highway, and there are detached homes with yards just blocks from the Chinatown core. It's thriving but not unique or interesting in terms of urban form. Does not compare well with, say, SF or Boston Chinatowns.

One thing I really like in Toronto is St. Lawrence Market. I think that's better than its equivalents in these other cities. And Toronto his notable for all its suburban highrise clusters. But overall, Toronto isn't quite in these other cities' league.

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by Atticman

Amazing. After all these years you still haven't learned anything about Toronto?

50 years ago Toronto was much bigger than Buffalo.

Toronto had an impressive skyline of pre-war skyscrapers by 1940 and most of those historic towers still exist to this day. The Royal York Hotel, The Canada Life Building, Commerce Court North, Old City hall and Union Station all count as iconic historic structures to anyone who lives in or is familiar with Toronto.

Toronto has a prewar streetscape covering about 50 square miles and had a million people by WW2, and it's prewar urban fabric is almost fully intact and is currently densifying.

That's not the best part of the premiere street, you purposely linked to the most unattractive spot on the corner of Bay and Bloor. The beautiful Yorkville neighbourhood is just a block to the North of Bloor.

Wow. No offense, but this is a perfect example of why it's difficult to discuss cities with a few Toronto forumers. They will reject easily verifiable facts like it's nothing and then attack anyone who posts anything factual. It's kind of amazing.

Basically everything you posted is flat-out untrue. In reality, Toronto and Buffalo were similarly sized in the postwar era, in reality Toronto has few prewar highrises of note, in reality Toronto's prewar landscape is comparatively small, and in reality Bloor Street is absolutely the premiere shopping street in Canada.

Anyone who denies these basic, easily verifiable truths, is pretty much fabricating stuff.

[Atticman]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Basically everything you posted is flat-out untrue.

Everything I said is true and I challenge you to prove me otherwise.

For example - in 1960 (57 years ago) Buffalo had a metro population of 1,306,957 while in 1961 Toronto had a metro population of 1,919,000. By 1970 Buffalo had only grown to 1,349,211 (its peak population), while by 1971 Toronto had grown to 2,628,045. So 50 years ago in 1967, the Toronto metro had a good million more people than the Buffalo metro.

If you want to go back to the time when Toronto and Buffalo were about the same size, you have to go all the way back to 1940-41 when Buffalo had a metro of 959,487 and Toronto had a metro of 951,549. That's 76 years ago!

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by Atticman

Everything I said is true and I challenge you to prove me otherwise.

Happy to do so. Everything you wrote is quite obviously untrue.

1.
Your first claim is that Buffalo and Toronto weren't comparable in size/importance. This is obviously false.

This Toronto article does a good job summarizing the postwar era, when the cities were roughly equal, and when Torontonians often went to Toronto for a good time.
That time when Buffalo was as big a deal as Toronto

Bufalo was wealthier than Toronto back then, and the populations were comparable. Both metros had around 900k residents around the end of WW2, per U.S. Census and Stats Canada.

2.
Your second claim is that Toronto has a lot of prewar highrises compared to other North American cities. This is quite obviously untrue. There are almost no prewar buildings of note outside the Royal York Hotel.

Emporis lists all highrises for cities around the world, and Toronto has almost no pre-1960 highrises. In contrast, these other cities tend to have a number of major (often 400 or 500 ft.+) prewar highrises of which Toronto obviously has none. Even the Royal York isn't exactly tall or super-renowned.

I don't think there's a single pre 1960's highrise among Toronto's 50 or 75 tallest buildings. That's kind of incredible. There was one 300 ft.+ building built in Toronto from the onset of the Great Depression until the 1960's.

3.
Your third claim is that Toronto does have a large prewar core compared to these other cities, which is, on its face, absurd. How could a 1950-era metro of 900k have a bigger core than a 1950-era metro of, say 4-5 million?

Toronto is the only one of these cities where suburban-style housing is plentiful right in the city core, because Toronto was still quite small during the earliest eras of suburbanization, so the streetcar suburbs are right off Yonge and the like.

4.
Your fourth claim is that Bloor isn't the top retail street in Canada, which is completely ridiculous. It's like a French person arguing that the Champs Elysees isn't the showplace retail street of France.

Bloor has, by far, the highest retail rents in Canada. It's always been know in Canada as the "Mink Mile"; the Fifth or Madison Ave. or Rodeo Drive of Canada:
Study Reveals Canada's Top Retail Street Rents

Bloor has all the major Canadian flagships. The flagship Holt Renfew (basically the Canadian version of Saks or Neiman Marcus) is right on Bloor, and actually in the Streetview I posted. Bloor has Cartier, Hermes, Chanel and all the flagship luxury retailers for Canada, all within of a block of my Streetview posting.

To argue it isn't the premiere shopping street in Canada is disingenuous to the extreme.

[bostonkid123]

Originally Posted by North 42

I find it's an exercise in futility to even bother to try to debate anything Toronto or Canada based with NOLA 101 and a couple of other well known Toronto/Canada haters on this site. It's like talking to a brick wall, regardless of the proven facts that are put out there, they will always dispute them, and then show their own blatant ignorance for all to see, with their ridiculous attempts at a rebuttal!

I wouldn't call them "Toronto haters" - I don't think any sane person would go out of their way to "hate" a city.

It's more a matter of lack of first-hand knowledge and life experience with the place/city/subject they are talking about, and an unwillingness to re-evaluate their preconceived perceptions of something. Happens to the best of us.

Before I moved to Toronto to work from Boston, I had the same general perceptions that Toronto was only a regional center with a few high rises and condos downtown, the CN tower, Dundas Square, Rogers Stadium, Blue Jays baseball, the Great Lakes, and not much else to show for. Even today, after 3 years living/working here, I am still being forced to re-evaluate some of those pre-conceived notions as I get exposed to new and different parts of the city that I previously did not know about. The best mindset I've found when exploring a new place is to maintain an open attitude, mix indiscriminately with the locals, and always remind oneself that nothing stays constant, which is especially true for a fast-growing, fantastically diverse city like Toronto.

[YIMBY]

Originally Posted by Enean

I would definitely say not Minneapolis. Their downtown is not terribly vibrant. Most of the people downtown are waiting at the bus stops. Otherwise, it's awfully quiet.

It is? So no one attends US Bank Stadium (NFL), Target Center (NBA & WNBA), Target Field (MLB), none of the smaller music venues, restaurants, retail stores, farmers markets, theaters, conventions, etc... ? Gotcha.

It is a bit odd that MPLS is on a comparison list with Toronto and San Francisco though.