For other cities, order comes easily. Washington, D.C. was built all at once on the Potomac River to the specifications of the 1791 L’Enfant Plan; a half-century later, Paris was gutted and remade, top to bottom, per Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s instructions. Things in Toronto have always been a little less tidy—instead, we’ve got “messy urbanism,” as American urban planner James Rojas has called in. — thegridto.com
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Toronto is sort of in decline with increasing flight to the suburbs. The metro area has become unwieldy. Transit, particularly the TTC subway, is not enough. Its roads and the airport are always under construction.
When in grad school, a Torontonian was also enrolled, although in another program. I asked her what Toronto was like, prior to having gone several times, and she said "expensive, pretentious, and boring."
Toronto's urban planners first need to ask what it will take to keep people in the urban core, other than high-rise, high-priced Vancouver-alike condos for those with a job as an investment banker or a lawyer, and stem the exodus to exurbia. People who once loved Toronto now love it less, and lament its past. A friend once e-mailed me an article entitled "The Phoenix falling," about Atlanta's being catapulted into popularity and a desirable metro in which to hang one's hat, but saying that the critical mass was causing it to show some serious wear and tear. Newer high rises and splashy shopping meccas like Atlantic Station are not testaments to its desirability.
I feel much the same way with successive visits to TO. With a nutty mayor and all that ceremonial Canadian bureaucracy, I hardly doubt it's a model of efficiency and cost control.
Observant, consider the nail to be hit square on the head. Your comments are dead-on.
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