Did they purposefully do that? No. The government said, "hey, let's destroy human life as we know it and make sure people have to start living in these vacuum-sealed lives far away from the big bad city. It's in no way the fault of these people that they chose to live there (and now it's actually very, very hard to plausibly live in high density close to the city.) Yet you're saying that we should punish them because they chose the only option they had open to them when they came to this city.
I reject your claim that those were their only options. The city was not big-bad-rotten as was in the US. If anything, Toronto was more vibrant than any place in north america. Our city had life, thanks to coordinated development.
Suburbs like richmond hill and vaughan grew primarily since the 1980s, increasing their population by several fold. R.H. went from 33 k in 1981 to 80 k in 1991, to an even further 132 k in 2001. By now it's probably around 200 k if not more. Similar stuff for vaughan.
I do not see what is very hard about living in the city. It's not like we're dealing with the victorian era ghetto city. Or a city of the permanent underclass like st. louis or chicago. I am not necessarily against shipping those people into new towns (much further out of the city itself), or to create street-car /subway suburbs. My problem is unplanned growth in the "automobile suburb". That is the major problem, when growth is not integrated with transportation. For that the suburbs deserve to be punished.
And then at the end of that, the outer suburbs started capitalizing on sprawl? That's just because Toronto ran outta room to do it themselves.
What is not clear about the suburbs luring away people and business thanks to lower taxes and cheaper homes? Coordinated development along transit lines halted once one went outside of metropolitan canada, and what we got instead was unplanned development, aka disaster - but great for short term profits.
And they'll pay for that by driving downtown instead of taking the train.
Well if we stop enhancing their service they will still continue to take it, and only realize the inconveniences of living so far away.
But I see nothing wrong with making them pay. Especially if the price of gas starts to increase. Lets bankrupt those mofos who financed the construction of the cul-de-sac monstrosoties of the suburbs.
This, this and this is absolutely the devil in terms of development
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http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/2079215/2112767/2129635/051107_arch_suburbSprawl_ex.jpg
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http://samrainer.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/suburban-usa.jpg
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http://environmentalgeography.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sprawl_houston_suburb_2006_large.jpg
Your problem is that you assume that GO Transit discourages the use of cars.
The poor guy is probably confusing auto suburb with streetcar/rail suburb.
Maybe these monstrosities would not be so bad if they were more compact, planned, so that one does not need to depend solely on the car to live over there. But hence the unplanned sprawl problem, the thing that must be condemned.
And along with that we must condemn those "libertarians" whose fundamental principle is no planning.
Hence we gotta attack the new conservatives that was to reduce government as much as possible, to take out regulations for the private business, and whatnot... what's quite scary is that their movement is gaining rapid support in alberta with their wild rose party... they've been taking many votes away from PC. But this is what can happen when systematic brainwashing is applied to the masses. That hegemony, where the peon class is brainwashed to believe that the interests of the richest of the rich are also their own interests.