The Canadian Urban Environment over the past few decades

[Second_in_pie]

What greenfield near higher quality transit might you be talking about? Heck, there's not even a lot of greenfield within the inner suburbs. If you want to get a nice mid-density community as you might find in London or Paris, you'd need to demo a few buildings. You're obviously not going to be tearing down all of the suburbs, but there are some areas that definitely could be let go.

 

[junctionist]

What greenfield near higher quality transit might you be talking about? Heck, there's not even a lot of greenfield within the inner suburbs. If you want to get a nice mid-density community as you might find in London or Paris, you'd need to demo a few buildings. You're obviously not going to be tearing down all of the suburbs, but there are some areas that definitely could be let go.

There's still plenty of open space around the Spadina subway extension, GO stations like Mount Pleasant, and other out suburban areas with premium transit. Greenfield development currently on the fringes of the city will need to have the quality transit to work out. Reconstructing the inner suburbs yet buildings hundreds of acres of new subdivisions in the old pattern won't be very effective. Plenty of the inner suburbs already have decent density through high-rise and mid-rise apartments and condos and wouldn't require that much reconstruction. Some indicators of the growing vibrancy are growing transit use and diversification of retail.

The outer suburbs with their typically larger houses, wider arterials, parkways, less diversity in housing options are more troubling. The least that should be done is taking steps to stop such styles of urban growth.