The GTA has been showing signs of the urban ills that are commonly associated with city life south the border
The GTA has been showing signs of the urban ills that are commonly associated with city life south the border.
Downtown infrastructure has been deteriorating, as have cleanliness and order, which were once the city’s strong suits.
In Ontario, growth has shifted to lower-cost places like Kitchener-Waterloo (110 kilometres from downtown Toronto), as well as Guelph (95 km), Peterborough (140 km) and London (195 km). Even long declining areas, like the Maritimes, have been gaining population in recent years.
Clearly a new approach is merited. Leaders in Toronto have to accept dispersion and find the city’s niche within a wider range of settlements. Downtowns themselves, as Calgary’s urban leadership now suggests, will have to morph from primarily business centres to places more oriented to housing, academic and cultural activities.
To be sure, swank high-rise projects may appeal to the wealthy and the childless. But the urban future lies in places that are walkable but not hyper-dense and can attract middle-income families.
I’ve watched Toronto decline over the last 20 years, and I’ll tell you what the problem is, and it is pretty obvious. Too many big businesses, big government offices, and big health care organizations are located downtown. Hundreds of thousands of people need to get to these places every day for work. No one likes a long commute, so people try to live as close to where they work downtown as possible, which leads to extremely high housing costs, which leads to more suburbs, more car use, and then demands to build more road infrastructure. Also, with so many giant office buildings downtown, it’s vibrant during the day, but then almost everyone leaves at night, and people don’t want to invest in community infrastructure because they actually live in the suburbs.
So, why are all the big institutions of business and government located downtown? It would be far better to spread big workplaces out across Ontario. In the olden days, sure, it made sense to centralize business, government, academia, and tertiary care hospitals for convenience, influence, cross-fertilization, and all that. It was also a centralization of the elites for prestige, and the decision-makers were always people who could afford to live downtown. But, nowadays, that is totally unnecessary. People chat online now and try to avoid having to go to in-person meetings if they can avoid it.
There should be a total ban on locating any more government or quasi-government offices downtown, and they should slowly be spread out to other cities. It would make everyone happier and shorten commutes. Over time, those big buildings should be converted back to residential use, so people can actually afford to raise a family downtown.
That’s what I said. We should increase the existing density of other cities besides Toronto. Toronto has great public transit and walkability in the downtown core. If other cities had large downtown employers and denser cores, they too would have enough commuters to justify good transit as well.
Wow, this sounds just like a Conservative rant about how dirty and evil and bad cities are, written to be consumed by folks from the burbs who haven’t been downtown for 25+ years.
What? NatPo is owned by an American hedge fund? Quelle surprise.
Wild how they didn’t write or publish this under the Ford or Tory mayoralships, eh? Infrastructure decay just hit out of the blue this year, for some reason.
Yeah, how quickly people forgot that the fatter, stupider Ford brother cancelled transit city with a one page memo on city letterhead – costing the city nearly $100 MILLION in wasted work and cancellation fees.
This issue had become more visible ever since the early days of COVID. Cities and urban cores became “ghost towns”, plenty of local business that serves the local community actually only catered unspokenly to commuting office workers, failing to stay afloat and many closed down as a result. It became apparent no one actually lived in the surrounding areas.
Our cities were and still area geared to single working individuals or couples without children. Nothing ties our city dwellers to their surroundings communities or business. What north america style cities are missing are a larger influx of families in cities.
Families provide strong ties and a sense of community. Very rarely do we see children walking in the downtown area or even playing on neighborhood streets. Instead most families move outside of cities as they grow in size for many reasons, housing and affordability being one of the big ones.
There are ways to fix this though. One of the main ways is city zoning policies. More “missing middle” style housing in needed.
“Missing middle” housing is the many different housing styles that sit between the standard sized suburban single family home and a typical downtown condo unit.
As we can see in north america families have limited choices and options when it comes to housing as they grow in size. Very rarely will a family be able to find a 3 bedroom apartment in a downtown core, and if they do a single family home in the suburbs will be priced more competitively and usually be larger in size.
Here is a great video talking about some of these points.
As an end note. Cities that design with a sense of place (referred to as “third place”) are always IMO more successful in providing a strong sense of community. You will see these “third places” all over European cities.
I will drop this last video here for anyone that is interested in knowing more about this.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here, but the author of the article doesn’t so much, I think. His thrust seems to be that we need to embrace urban sprawl, and in the course of doing that, rather than densifying urban residential areas, instead de-densify downtown cores and go all in on suburbs and exurbs.
You know, you’re right. I read the article once more over and there does seem to be more of a push into urban sprawl as a good thing.
Though as another commenter here has already stated urban sprawl is financially unsustainable in the long run and has had many studies done on the topic. Urban sprawl is also what feeds to an urban decline IMO specifically related to my point about families not being present in urban communities.
Not to mention the grain of truth is there because they sowed it. My city’s limits have been constantly expanding to include more and more rural areas, and now they run the show. What a surprise when conservative politicians cut funding to city core services that they can’t keep up.
And nary a word about exploitative corporate landlords or rising costs or a dearth of affordable housing that’s driving both small businesses and regular people out of cities.
Of course, that would mean criticizing the invisible hand of the market.
Look around downtown Toronto. Hell, look around any city of any size in Ontario and ask who–aside from landlord, landlord’s real estate agents, landlords who are real estate agents and their bankers and mistresses and mistresses’ botox clinic/Porsche mechanic–can afford to live or start a business there? Do you want to pay three quarters of a million dollars for batchelor condo, and still pay maintenance fees atop that? How about starting a business when your landlord might decide to jack your rent 1000% because TD or Starbucks wants the space, or because your landlord’s coke dealer raised their prices that week?
Toronto’s problem isn’t like, eg, Detroit. It’s not getting hollowed out by White Flight. It’s more akin to San Francisco’s challenges, and that’s 100% raw, unadulterated money-grubbing at scale, which is nowhere near a progressive problem, unless you mean that we aren’t taxing these rentier fucks anywhere near enough.
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I’ve watched Toronto decline over the last 20 years, and I’ll tell you what the problem is, and it is pretty obvious. Too many big businesses, big government offices, and big health care organizations are located downtown. Hundreds of thousands of people need to get to these places every day for work. No one likes a long commute, so people try to live as close to where they work downtown as possible, which leads to extremely high housing costs, which leads to more suburbs, more car use, and then demands to build more road infrastructure. Also, with so many giant office buildings downtown, it’s vibrant during the day, but then almost everyone leaves at night, and people don’t want to invest in community infrastructure because they actually live in the suburbs.
So, why are all the big institutions of business and government located downtown? It would be far better to spread big workplaces out across Ontario. In the olden days, sure, it made sense to centralize business, government, academia, and tertiary care hospitals for convenience, influence, cross-fertilization, and all that. It was also a centralization of the elites for prestige, and the decision-makers were always people who could afford to live downtown. But, nowadays, that is totally unnecessary. People chat online now and try to avoid having to go to in-person meetings if they can avoid it.
There should be a total ban on locating any more government or quasi-government offices downtown, and they should slowly be spread out to other cities. It would make everyone happier and shorten commutes. Over time, those big buildings should be converted back to residential use, so people can actually afford to raise a family downtown.
deleted by creator
That’s what I said. We should increase the existing density of other cities besides Toronto. Toronto has great public transit and walkability in the downtown core. If other cities had large downtown employers and denser cores, they too would have enough commuters to justify good transit as well.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with this:
It now takes 39 years for an average person to buy a home in the GTA
Wow, this sounds just like a Conservative rant about how dirty and evil and bad cities are, written to be consumed by folks from the burbs who haven’t been downtown for 25+ years.
What? NatPo is owned by an American hedge fund? Quelle surprise.
Wild how they didn’t write or publish this under the Ford or Tory mayoralships, eh? Infrastructure decay just hit out of the blue this year, for some reason.
Yeah, how quickly people forgot that the fatter, stupider Ford brother cancelled transit city with a one page memo on city letterhead – costing the city nearly $100 MILLION in wasted work and cancellation fees.
Fiscal responsibility my ass.
This issue had become more visible ever since the early days of COVID. Cities and urban cores became “ghost towns”, plenty of local business that serves the local community actually only catered unspokenly to commuting office workers, failing to stay afloat and many closed down as a result. It became apparent no one actually lived in the surrounding areas.
Our cities were and still area geared to single working individuals or couples without children. Nothing ties our city dwellers to their surroundings communities or business. What north america style cities are missing are a larger influx of families in cities.
Families provide strong ties and a sense of community. Very rarely do we see children walking in the downtown area or even playing on neighborhood streets. Instead most families move outside of cities as they grow in size for many reasons, housing and affordability being one of the big ones.
There are ways to fix this though. One of the main ways is city zoning policies. More “missing middle” style housing in needed.
“Missing middle” housing is the many different housing styles that sit between the standard sized suburban single family home and a typical downtown condo unit.
As we can see in north america families have limited choices and options when it comes to housing as they grow in size. Very rarely will a family be able to find a 3 bedroom apartment in a downtown core, and if they do a single family home in the suburbs will be priced more competitively and usually be larger in size.
Here is a great video talking about some of these points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM
And here is a great article as to why developers can’t build family sized units in north america.
https://www.centerforbuilding.org/blog/we-we-cant-build-family-sized-apartments-in-north-america#:~:text=There are two factors driving,dictated by the zoning code.
As an end note. Cities that design with a sense of place (referred to as “third place”) are always IMO more successful in providing a strong sense of community. You will see these “third places” all over European cities.
I will drop this last video here for anyone that is interested in knowing more about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOc8ASeHYNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=AOc8ASeHYNw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Just finished an “About Here” video looking at the absence of new “small” single-lot apartment buildings in North America.
Thought it was another interesting take on how zoning can contribute to housing prices.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
“About Here” video looking at the absence of new “small” single-lot apartment buildings in North America
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here, but the author of the article doesn’t so much, I think. His thrust seems to be that we need to embrace urban sprawl, and in the course of doing that, rather than densifying urban residential areas, instead de-densify downtown cores and go all in on suburbs and exurbs.
You know, you’re right. I read the article once more over and there does seem to be more of a push into urban sprawl as a good thing.
Though as another commenter here has already stated urban sprawl is financially unsustainable in the long run and has had many studies done on the topic. Urban sprawl is also what feeds to an urban decline IMO specifically related to my point about families not being present in urban communities.
Swing and miss by NatPo. Not that anyone should expect much from an opinion piece from any of a conservative American hedge fund’s papers.
NIMBYs can come in any political stripe and must be countered everywhere.
There’s grains of truth peppered in throughout this piece but it’s light on quality sources.
Cities will have to become denser mixed use places. More car dependent suburban sprawl is not the answer. It’s been proven not fiscally sustainable.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
It’s been proven not fiscally sustainable.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Not to mention the grain of truth is there because they sowed it. My city’s limits have been constantly expanding to include more and more rural areas, and now they run the show. What a surprise when conservative politicians cut funding to city core services that they can’t keep up.
And nary a word about exploitative corporate landlords or rising costs or a dearth of affordable housing that’s driving both small businesses and regular people out of cities.
Of course, that would mean criticizing the invisible hand of the market.
Look around downtown Toronto. Hell, look around any city of any size in Ontario and ask who–aside from landlord, landlord’s real estate agents, landlords who are real estate agents and their bankers and mistresses and mistresses’ botox clinic/Porsche mechanic–can afford to live or start a business there? Do you want to pay three quarters of a million dollars for batchelor condo, and still pay maintenance fees atop that? How about starting a business when your landlord might decide to jack your rent 1000% because TD or Starbucks wants the space, or because your landlord’s coke dealer raised their prices that week?
Toronto’s problem isn’t like, eg, Detroit. It’s not getting hollowed out by White Flight. It’s more akin to San Francisco’s challenges, and that’s 100% raw, unadulterated money-grubbing at scale, which is nowhere near a progressive problem, unless you mean that we aren’t taxing these rentier fucks anywhere near enough.