One thing about Toronto that I wish it didn't have was as many detached houses so close to the urban core. It bugs me that the Annex houses do not connect much like they do in places like Georgetown in Washington DC or Greenwhich Village in New York City. It looks very clumsy and it feels like a suburb in the middle of the city. This is also the case with areas inbetween Spadina and University Avenue.
In a way I agree, but that's our built vernacular and it is impossible to change it without disrupting the city. Bay and Gable neighbourhoods are great generators of diversity and spontaneous commercial uses, so they're not all bad. I would go so far as to say that Toronto might be the most exciting, urbane city that's downtown built form mostly consists of semi-detached houses with front yards. On the plus side, a lot of the areas that we are redeveloping downtown have a solid, midrise vibe. Stewart street in Freedville, for example, has a fantastic streetwall and midrise canyon that makes you feel like you're in a large, continental European city. Charlotte street, where they are building Charlie and Langston Hall, and where they recently built Glas, the Hudson and the Charlotte is another one of these streets and it fits really well with the surrounding turn of the century warehouses making it feel like Toronto's TriBeCa. Slowly but surely, Toronto is starting to not only have the culture of a big city but look like a big city, too. And don't forget the evolution of King East!
I also don't like how Toronto's waterfront has the industrial look that it has. Some of the eyesores that are deemed "historical" really need to just dissappear already.
Well, the point of keeping historic buildings is not to make something aesthetically pleasing in the eyes of the current generation, but to preserve a record of the city's history. How many times have you looked at a picture in the "Then and Now" thread and said "oh, so that's what used to be there!"
Lastly, the downtown area in Toronto does not have enough authentic greenspace. It really is a concrete jungle and I would imagine it would be hard to own a dog in the downtown area as there are such limited available parks and whatnot.
Okay, I agree here. We have scraps of marginal green space, where a condo developer was forced to build a parkette as part of some city agreement and did a half-assed job creating usable green space. This is especially true along the Bay street condo corridor where there are dozens of little fountains, and some shrubbery or a bench, but nothing that would allow kids to run around, dogs to run around, anyone to play any kind of sport that involves space larger than a living room, etc.
Mind you, there are some parks that are well utilized and some parks that have design features that permit the kind of activities I want, but they are sort of rare gems: Trinity Bellwoods, of course, but it's kind of out of the way from the remainder of downtown. Other parks like Christie Pits or Alexandra park are a little too utilitarian in their design in the sense that they facilitate sports activities but are not a place of urban escape for those who don't want to throw a ball or do skateboard tricks. We don't need to demolish useful buildings to make way for parks, but we should enhance the design of the ones we already have. Why not make more out of Clarence Square with its handsome rowhouses and ancient trees? Just because Moss Park is in a sketchy neighbourhood doesn't mean the park should be sketchy. Why not take a cue from NYC parks in poor neighbourhoods which are the pride of local citizens? Why not make Ramsden Park more than a baseball diamond, some crumbling tennis courts and a garbage transfer station? There is so much we could do in terms of improving our parks.
