Silence&Motion
Senior Member
But the vast majority of Toronto and Calgary looks exactly like Airdrie, which is a problem for both cities - not because of a "perverse infatuation with downtown density", but because sprawl is financially, environmentally, and logistically unsustainable as city regions get into a million+ population.
If you redistributed the population of Toronto to make it more even, you'd get a lot more neighbourhoods like Long Branch, which has a density of about 4,500 people/km2. Which is basically the equivalent of taking one of Calgary's inner-city neighbourhoods (South Calgary, Sunnyside, Windsor Park, etc.) that tend to have density in the 3000-range, and adding a some additional mid-rise apartment buildings.
The point is, you can increase density by a lot before you're getting into anything that looks like the Beltline, let alone downtown Toronto (and especially Hong Kong). But suggest any strategies for reining in sprawl and people start talking like you might as well be forcing them into a tenement building in lower Manhattan in the 1890s.
If you redistributed the population of Toronto to make it more even, you'd get a lot more neighbourhoods like Long Branch, which has a density of about 4,500 people/km2. Which is basically the equivalent of taking one of Calgary's inner-city neighbourhoods (South Calgary, Sunnyside, Windsor Park, etc.) that tend to have density in the 3000-range, and adding a some additional mid-rise apartment buildings.
The point is, you can increase density by a lot before you're getting into anything that looks like the Beltline, let alone downtown Toronto (and especially Hong Kong). But suggest any strategies for reining in sprawl and people start talking like you might as well be forcing them into a tenement building in lower Manhattan in the 1890s.
