Toronto Urban Sprawl Compared to Other Cities

[allabootmatt]

I am not as well traveled within the United States but that kind of hell-hole is what I always imagined Phoenix to be like.

I really have to question what goes through peoples mind when they decide to buy a house in Las Vegas or Phoenix. They are literally, and I mean quite literally, buying a piece of land in the fricken desert. There is no shortage of suburban sprawl in the United States and they could buy a lot of land for an equivalent price quite literally, anywhere, in the United States, yet they choose to do so in the fricken desert??

It's sunny and warm year-round, and you can golf or play tennis anythime you like. For many people (including many retirees from various places in Canada) those are big positives.

 

[Skeezix]

It's sunny and warm year-round, and you can golf or play tennis anythime you like. For many people (including many retirees from various places in Canada) those are big positives.

Positives for a resort, but not a compelling list of pluses for a city.

 

[salsa]

It's sunny and warm year-round, and you can golf or play tennis anythime you like. For many people (including many retirees from various places in Canada) those are big positives.

It's pleasant in the winter, but in the summer you'd be better off someplace else.

 

[AndreaPalladio]

But it's a dry heat.

 

[WislaHD]

It's sunny and warm year-round, and you can golf or play tennis anythime you like. For many people (including many retirees from various places in Canada) those are big positives.

You could do that in Florida, or in California, Virginia, Texas, or any number of places too. And you wouldn't be buying a lot of land in the desert.

 

[W. K. Lis]

But it's a dry heat.

But do they allow you a clothesline like in Ontario? The first item of clothing may even be dry by the time you finish putting up the last one?

 

[Johnny Au]

The famous Las Vegas strip is mostly not in Las Vegas itself. It's mostly in the unincorporated town of Paradise. While "downtown" is in Las Vegas, Paradise contains most of tourist attractions in the Las Vegas area. Being "unincorporated", there are no by-laws except for the laws of the county and state.

Here is a video discussing Las Vegas in detail:

 

[AlbertHWagstaff]

It's almost beautiful in a sort of strange post-apocalyptic bunker kind of way.

It is dreary as all hell though. Worse even than the greyness of Toronto's towers in the middle of winter.

Just catching up here. At one time, like every other major US city, the main street in Atlanta used to be a real main street with actual street life, before the suburban malls and highways sucked the life out of it.

 

[CDL.TO]

Toronto's sprawl has always had a relatively hard edge. You could draw a line a say "this side of the line is developed, that side of the line is farm fields".

So much of the sprawl in the US has not been like that. They've had much more leapfrog development, where development occurs with large gaps of vacant land.

They've also had lots of low density suburban sprawl, which is almost rural in nature.

Although similar examples may exist in the GTA, if they do then they're rare. And thank goodness for that. These types of development patterns make providing services extremely expensive.

The GTA has done pretty well avoiding the worst forms of sprawl.

 

[christiesplits]

Although similar examples may exist in the GTA, if they do then they're rare. And thank goodness for that. These types of development patterns make providing services extremely expensive.

The GTA has done pretty well avoiding the worst forms of sprawl.

I agree we have dodged the worst of the worst. There are some traces of that type of "rural sprawl" in and around King City and Bolton, but not to the extent of our southern neighbours.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Just catching up here. At one time, like every other major US city, the main street in Atlanta used to be a real main street with actual street life, before the suburban malls and highways sucked the life out of it.

Hey, thanks for that pic.....looks like it was a fun place before someone turned it into a boring version of Bladerunner's LA.

Re:Las Vegas vs Paradise.....I went through most of Nevada and don't understand why anything other than mines and mining camps exists there. We especially had a good laugh at the dirt farms for sale in Nevada and Utah. 30 dollars an acre, which I found to be a scam and a half. Las Vegas is literally a blight upon the landscape. We drove in from the northeast where you can kind of see it all splayed out in its anti-glory. I don't even want to ever see Pheonix.
PS:Reno-Sparks is just as bad.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I actually kissed the ground outside at Pearson when I got back from a 3 week trip that ended in Las Vegas. What. A. Hole.

Better or worse than Niagara Falls (Ontario)?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Atlanta is not much different than most American cities when it comes to the sheer amount of parking, but they are just everywhere. Pretty much every large hotel or office building has a parking garage connected to it. In some areas there are several city blocks where there's nothing but parking garages.

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Occasionally you will see a feeble attempt to diminish the presence of a parking garage by putting a restaurant on the bottom floor. This example is on Atlanta's main street, so frankly there shouldn't be a parking garage here in the first place. Then again, there shouldn't be a blank wall across from it either.

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By now you probably notice that sky bridges are quite common around here, as if people don't like being on the street. Maybe it's because of the heat, or because it sucks to walk in downtown Atlanta.

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Overall my impression of downtown Atlanta is that it's an incredibly cold and sterile place, and not just because of the buildings. In almost every photo you also see that the streets are one-way, which is only good for moving cars as quickly as possible. There are only a couple of nice streets with restaurants and all, but you have to walk past a ton of soulless building to get there, so I just went to a food court instead. Since almost no one lives here, the street life dies down as soon as everyone comes home from work. The downtown is basically just a central business district. There is little reason to be there unless you work here or there's a game happening. What a terrible city.

It's almost beautiful in a sort of strange post-apocalyptic bunker kind of way.

It is dreary as all hell though. Worse even than the greyness of Toronto's towers in the middle of winter.

Honestly, I'm offended that you'd try to even compare Toronto to Atlanta.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

You may enjoy this piece I wrote for Spacing a number of years back...

Atlanta on My Mind

Nice write up, Jason.

While the “business” of the trip kept me holed-up at CNN Center for the first three days, I was able to spend the Saturday with my urban exploration shoes on and was looking forward to a combination of heavy walking and heavy shopping! However, the city was eerily quiet and most shops were closed. The few that were open catered mostly to tourists and the entire Mall at Peachtree Center was closed, save a few shops.

I'm shocked that a city as big as Atlanta would have most of its shops closed on the weekends. In every major city I've been in, the weekends are pretty big shopping days. Especially in Toronto, where on the weekends the streets are overflowing with pedestrian traffic.

One of the most apparent things about riding Atlanta’s Metro is how ‘black’ it is. I rarely saw another Caucasian person. The staff were relatively friendly though and for someone with a fair amount of urban smarts, I felt much safer on the system than I had outside in the Six Points area. The level of weekend service leaves a lot to be desired though as I waited about 12 minutes for a train.

I felt the city was heavily racially segregated when I visited a few years ago. This definitely manifests itself on the MARTA. It made me quite a bit uncomfortable.

 

[AndreaPalladio]

The big shopping in Atlanta is in Buckhead, not downtown. It's weird, having to go out there, and there not being anything to buy in downtown, I admit, but Buckhead is wear the money is. I think there is also another great mall in one of the other suburbrs (Marietta? Alphretta?)

MARTA is really self segregated. My friend who lives there (well, just outside the city now) was shocked when his coworkers were shocked when he took MARTA when he first moved there.