Toronto Urban Sprawl Compared to Other Cities

[middeljohn]

Good thing about Parclos; they were invented here.

Did you write the article on 400 series highways on wikipedia?

 

[Johnny Au]

Did you write the article on 400 series highways on wikipedia?

No. I only made minor changes to them. When I say minor, I mean adding and removing commas, using proper dashes, bypassing redirects, and such. The idea remains the same.

 

[diminutive]

The Economist: Ministers are fighting—not successfully—to overcome NIMBYism and planning laws enacted in the 1940s

....
In the postwar years lots of new homes went up anyway. Urban councils enthusiastically cleared slums and built vast new housing estates, which they rented out to local residents from a waiting-list. But in the early 1980s Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government all but banned councils from building, while largely preserving the restrictions on private development. In the 1990s environmental regulations made things more complex. Then Tony Blair’s Labour government insisted that post-industrial “brownfield” land be prioritised over green fields, which are usually cheaper to build on.


All of this has gradually reduced the amount of land released. And, says Paul Cheshire at the London School of Economics, it has pushed what building there is to the wrong places. Before the recession over half of new dwellings built were flats, often in northern cities. When mortgage finance dried up in 2008, these collapsed in value. The few suburban homes that go up are often far outside city boundaries, pushed out by green belts. Aylesbury is growing because it is just beyond London’s green belt (see map). The new residents of such places are stuck with long, expensive commutes.

Near successful cities like Oxford, or in the London green belt, land with planning permission can cost hundreds of times more than farming land, more than doubling the cost of a new house. The shortage of land also accounts for Britain’s uncompetitive building industry. Because land is so scarce, house-builders behave like speculators: they devote their resources to finding and buying sites that might get planning permission. Even a small rise in house prices feeds into a big rise in land values as bidding wars break out
...

Considering this thread started with discussions about London I thought this article would fit best here. It takes a somewhat dim view of green-belts and the like. It raises the question of how to combat sprawl without introducing terribly market-distorting land use restrictions.

 

[King of Kensington]

The point is well taken but the idea that thousands of acres of Toronto's environs don't look precisely like this is ridiculous.

And I would not choose Atlanta as a city indicative of general trends int he US. Its historical and geographic development makes it the freak of the East Coast. You might as well claim all Canadian cities resemble Halifax.

Atlanta is a sunbelt city and that type of urban form is pretty typical in Southern cities. The Washington DC area also doesn't seem to have "northeastern" type suburbs and in a way resembles California type suburbs.

 

[King of Kensington]

KDP: Oakville is about 20 miles W of Downtown Toronto...New York's outer city/suburban areas tend to be older then Toronto's suburbs and to get a reasonable equivalent in density you need to go at least 30 miles from Manhattan: Eastern Nassau County on Long Island; In New Jersey
there are cities like Newark (10 miles W of Manhattan) and Paterson being among the largest NJ cities and suburbs are away W or S (in Newark's case) or N and W (Paterson) being examples...Upper Westchester County N of White Plains would be an equivalent density to Oakville also...

LI MIKE

Hard to compare, but there seems to be a lot of "Oakville" type suburbs in the Northeastern and Midwestern metros. Some of the affluent New Jersey towns feel Oakville-ish also. White Plains itself is older and feels more urban.

 

[W. K. Lis]

World is sleepwalking to a global energy crisis

From this Guardian article, at this link:

A conference sponsored by a US military official convened experts in Washington DC and London warning that continued dependence on fossil fuels puts the world at risk of an unprecedented energy crunch that could inflame financial crisis and exacerbate dangerous climate change.

The 'Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue', which took place on 10th December last year, was co-organised by a US Army official, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, operating in a private capacity, in association with former petroleum geologist Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Gas.

Participants, who addressed one another via video link, consisted of retired military officers, security experts, senior industry executives, and politicians from the main parties - including two former UK ministers. According to US Army colonel Daniel Davis, a veteran of four tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, and regular contributor to the Armed Forces Journal:

"We put the event together because the prevailing idea that we have a bright future of increasing oil and gas production that can sustain our current way of life indefinitely is based on a selective appraisal of the data. We brought together experts from across the spectrum, and with a wide range of opinions, to have a comprehensive look at all the relevant data. When you only look at certain things, like the very real resurgence of US oil and gas production, the picture looks fine. But when you dig deeper into the data, it becomes clear that this is only part of the picture. And the big picture proves that our current course cannot continue without significant risks."


​

The dialogue opened with a presentation by Mark C. Lewis, former head of energy research at Deutsche Bank's commodities unit, who highlighted three interlinked problems facing the global energy system: "very high decline rates" in global production; "soaring" investment requirements "to find new oil"; and since 2005, "falling exports of crude oil globally."

Lewis told participants that the International Energy Agency's (IEA) own "comprehensive" analysis in its World Energy Outlook of the 1,600 fields providing 70% of today's global oil supply, show "an observed decline rate of 6.2%" - double the IEA's stated estimate of future decline rate out to 2035 of about 3%.

The IEA report also shows that despite oil industry investment trebling in real terms since 2000 (an increase of around 200-300%), this has translated into an oil supply increase of just 12%. Lewis said:

"That is a very striking number and one I think that should be ringing alarm bells. It indicates to me that something has fundamentally changed in the economics of the oil industry and that you're having to invest more and more for diminishing incremental production."


​

Lewis also referred to US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showing that although global crude oil exports increased "year on year from 2001 to 2005", they "peaked in 2005 and have been trending down since 2009." Lewis attributed this trend to rapidly rising populations in the Middle East which has led to escalating domestic oil consumption, effectively eating into the quantity of oil available to export onto world markets.

OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) populations since 2000 have increased at twice the rate of the world as a whole. This has driven them to increase their oil consumption four times faster, or by 56%, relative to the rest of the world.

Such increases in domestic consumption, curtailing global exports, have been enabled by a corresponding increase in domestic subsidies, said Lewis. Fossil fuel subsidies have increased to $544 billion, nearly half of which amounted to oil subsidies dominated by Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Against this consistent trend of rapidly declining oil exports, Lewis questioned the IEA's projection of an increase in global crude oil exports and imports from 35 to 38 million barrels a day out to 2035. He pointed out that if such domestic subsidies are removed by OPEC to facilitate increased exports, this would increase "the risk of greater domestic stress and social disorder", as already seen since the 'Arab spring'.

Lewis' presentation was complimented by geoscientist David Hughes, formerly of the Geological Survey of Canada, who cited a wealth of official data demonstrating that shale oil production is likely to peak around 2016-17. Similarly, US shale gas production has sustained a plateau for the last year that is unlikely to retain long-term sustainability due to spectacularly high decline rates, and because the vast majority of production comes from just two or three plays.

The upshot is that continued dependence on fossil fuels is becoming increasingly expensive, with oil prices continuing to rise for the foreseeable future, impinging evermore on global economic growth. At worst, declining global exports point to a risk of an oil crunch that could, in turn, trigger another financial crash.

Co-convener of the conference Leggett, author of the new book, The Energy of Nations, said:

"It should not be forgotten that only a very few people warned that the financial incumbency had their particular comforting narrative catastrophically wrong, until the proof came along in the shape of the financial crash." According to Leggett, a global energy crisis is unlikely to "erupt fully until 2015 at the earliest."


​

According to Lt. Col. Davis, scepticism of the oil industry's bullishness about future production is growing amongst senior Pentagon officials:

"A lot of high-ranking officials are starting to ask exactly these hard questions about the sustainability of the current energy system. You've got to remember that for the military, it doesn't matter what you want to do. What matters is what you can do, and it's our top priority to make sure we understand potential limits to our operational capability. Even the EIA is forecasting that we could see a peak of shale production by 2018 followed by a plateau and decline, and the Pentagon knows this. But our transport infrastructure is totally dependent on liquid fuels. How are we going to sustain that infrastructure with these decline rates? That's why serious questions are being asked by high level US military officials as to what exactly the Army, as well as American society in general, is going to do to address this challenge."

​

 

[ehlow]

I drove through Bathurst between Sheppard and Eglinton today, and considering that it's often thought of as a suburban area, it was very urban.

Very high densities consistently, 5-10 story apartment buildings throughout the stretch, along with some shorter apartment buildings too. Lots of narrow storefronts with interesting non-chain retail. Lots of character due to the Jewish nature of the neighbourhood, Jewish restaurants, people in Hasidic Jewish clothing walking around (reminded me of Williamsburg Brooklyn).

It made me wish that the Spadina/University subway went underneath Bathurst instead of through a ravine & highway. It also made me think it would be cool if the streetcar continued north of Bloor into these areas.

 

[junctionist]

Exactly. Not building the Spadina line under Bathurst was a huge missed opportunity. Bathurst probably would have developed into a prominent urban street, with a built form similar to Yonge from Rosedale to North Toronto. Putting subway lines right in the middle of neighbourhoods where they're most accessible rather than on the fringes in a transportation corridor has greater city-building potential.

 

[King of Kensington]

I drove through Bathurst between Sheppard and Eglinton today, and considering that it's often thought of as a suburban area, it was very urban.

Very high densities consistently, 5-10 story apartment buildings throughout the stretch, along with some shorter apartment buildings too. Lots of narrow storefronts with interesting non-chain retail. Lots of character due to the Jewish nature of the neighbourhood, Jewish restaurants, people in Hasidic Jewish clothing walking around (reminded me of Williamsburg Brooklyn).

It made me wish that the Spadina/University subway went underneath Bathurst instead of through a ravine & highway. It also made me think it would be cool if the streetcar continued north of Bloor into these areas.

Yeah, it's an interesting area, a very urban suburbia. It is the heart of both Orthodox Jewish Toronto and also the city's biggest concentration of Filipinos. Bathurst itself feels quite dense, but then go off on the side streets and it's classic 1950s suburbia mixed in with perhaps the greatest concentration of teardown "monster homes" in the 416. Overall it's quite a mixed area socioeconomically.

Of course unlike Williamsburg it is "beyond the Pale" (pardon the pun) for the hipster demographic. Perhaps it is more akin to Jewish neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn or in Queens?

Bathurst between Eglinton and Sheppard is one of the GTA's two Orthodox Jewish enclaves. The other is around Bathurst and Clark in Thornhill and that is much more suburban.

 

[ehlow]

Yeah, it's an interesting area, a very urban suburbia. It is the heart of both Orthodox Jewish Toronto and also the city's biggest concentration of Filipinos. Bathurst itself feels quite dense, but then go off on the side streets and it's classic 1950s suburbia mixed in with perhaps the greatest concentration of teardown "monster homes" in the 416. Overall it's quite a mixed area socioeconomically.

Of course unlike Williamsburg it is "beyond the Pale" (pardon the pun) for the hipster demographic. Perhaps it is more akin to Jewish neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn or in Queens?

Bathurst between Eglinton and Sheppard is one of the GTA's two Orthodox Jewish enclaves. The other is around Bathurst and Clark in Thornhill and that is much more suburban.

Good point, however, you could imagine that sometime in the future it could become more "hipster" and/or gentrified or more popular eh? It seems to have a lot of apartment housing stock, which I assume is affordable. It has density, and seems mixed-use & relatively walkable near Bathurst. Also, it would be about a 10-15 min walk to the subway stations along Allen Rd, so transit-wise it's pretty good.

 

[King of Kensington]

Good point, however, you could imagine that sometime in the future it could become more "hipster" and/or gentrified or more popular eh? It seems to have a lot of apartment housing stock, which I assume is affordable. It has density, and seems mixed-use & relatively walkable near Bathurst. Also, it would be about a 10-15 min walk to the subway stations along Allen Rd, so transit-wise it's pretty good.

Will hipsters go for bungalows that were considered "state of the art" in 1960?

 

[ehlow]

Will hipsters go for bungalows that were considered "state of the art" in 1960?

Well they certainly love Victorian houses built in the late 1800's. Maybe by the mid-21st century, mid-20th century architecture will be cool

Or are we talking about yuppies? I assumed artsy early-gentrifiers usually go for affordable housing above all else.

 

[King of Kensington]

This area must have one of the lowest levels of TDSB attendance among the school-aged population. Orthodox Jews send their kids to Jewish day schools, and most Filipino students are in the separate system.

 

[Johnny Au]

This area must have one of the lowest levels of TDSB attendance among the school-aged population. Orthodox Jews send their kids to Jewish day schools, and most Filipino students are in the separate system.

Arlington Middle School is now a Jewish day school, mainly due to that community having fewer secular students over the past few years.

 

[pman]

Exactly. Not building the Spadina line under Bathurst was a huge missed opportunity. Bathurst probably would have developed into a prominent urban street, with a built form similar to Yonge from Rosedale to North Toronto. Putting subway lines right in the middle of neighbourhoods where they're most accessible rather than on the fringes in a transportation corridor has greater city-building potential.

Which is why our political process locates what little heavy rail rapid transit we do manage to build in the lowest density locations. Because the suburbanites who form a majority on City Council wouldn't know or care about city-building if it smacked them in their collective ass, and Canada's New Government will only fund heavy rail projects to suburban or exurban ridings where it thinks it has a shot. What a stupid f*cking waste.