[adma]

An interesting proposition but rather difficult to implement given that City councillors from your much maligned "suburbs" outnumber those from the old City. I could enjoy more the comedic content of your plan if I were sure that you were only kidding. You're kidding right? The gullible need to know.

Uh, yeah, he was kidding. If you consider it carefully, it was a tongue-in-cheek response to balenciago--who, unfortunately, *isn't* kidding...

 

[balenciaga]

If your argument is valid publishing the other riding statistics you are suppressing should strengthen your position. Your failure to do so is suspicious.

I don't see the point here. The author is comparing downtown with the entire city as well as GTA. If downtown has higher growth than average, that means the rest of the city has lower growth. Isn't it obvious?
What do you think the author is trying to hide?

Toronto Centre-Rosedale, Trinity-Spadina and St Paul's are the three ridings that matter. They are the future of Toronto. The higher percentage of people live in these three ridings, the better for the city. When one lives as far as Victoria Park or Sheppard, it is already urban sprawl. We need a more dense and compact city with extensive amenities near where we live, so that we don't have drive to the grocery store or just watch a movie. It is be more cost effective to provide services as well such as libraries, schools and transit since people live closer to each other.

BTW, population growth in all ridings is available. Most growth is from Trinity-Spadina, which is not surprising. What needs to be done now is to dramatically increase housing supply in downtown east as well as midtown. For example, start building more midrise condos/apartments in Rosedale and Moore Park (NIMBYs will fight with tooth and nail, I know).

http://metronews.ca/voices/ford-for-toronto/338316/boomtown-toronto-trinity-spadina-growth/


These three ridings plus Davenport have a density of 8,400/sq km, more than twice of Toronto as a whole (4,150)

 

[jaycola]

Maybe using the suburbs as a whole doesn't tell the whole story either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorontoWikipedia shows Toronto's population at 2,615,060 and the suburbs another 2,968,000.

Toronto city's actual increase would be calculates 2.615x .162 or 423,000 persons over the 5 years.
The Suburbs would be 2.968x. .137 or about 406,000 persons.
That's nearly a dead heat. Since basement apartments arent legal in most suburban municipalitles, I expect there are many who arent being counted at this time too.

According to information provided Vaughan's population increased 22.2% between 2006 and 2011. Maybe if you look at individual municipalities, Toronto isn't doing that much better than other suburban municipalities in terms of growth. york.ca

Since Mississauga is essentially built out and municipalities such as Milton and King City are pulling back on development, these numbers don't tell the whole tale.

Toronto's downtown has certainly grown and I think that is surely a positive but I don't think this demonstrates a major shift. When two urban singles hook up and decide to have kids, they are likely going to have to move to the suburbs because that will be their only affordable option.

Oh and those suburban residents added to the 905?...I expect they will show a much higher birth rate than the new urban dwellers mentioned in this study.

 

[balenciaga]

Maybe using the suburbs as a whole doesn't tell the whole story either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorontoWikipedia shows Toronto's population at 2,615,060 and the suburbs another 2,968,000.

Toronto city's actual increase would be calculates 2.615x .162 or 423,000 persons over the 5 years.
The Suburbs would be 2.968x. .137 or about 406,000 persons.
That's nearly a dead heat. Since basement apartments arent legal in most suburban municipalitles, I expect there are many who arent being counted at this time too.

According to information provided Vaughan's population increased 22.2% between 2006 and 2011. Maybe if you look at individual municipalities, Toronto isn't doing that much better than other suburban municipalities in terms of growth. york.ca

So no areas in the city of Toronto are the suburbs? You can't consider 416 to the the city and the rest suburbs, as a large part of the 416 is the suburbs too.
The author's point was more people are living in compact urban areas of Toronto, so very sparse car depended Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York definitely don't belong to that category, nor do any peripheries of old Toronto such as East York, the beaches etc. as they are essentially not so much different from Scarborough.

 

[adma]

You speak of "suburbs" the way McCarthy spoke of "communists".

 

[W. K. Lis]

So no areas in the city of Toronto are the suburbs? You can't consider 416 to the the city and the rest suburbs, as a large part of the 416 is the suburbs too.
The author's point was more people are living in compact urban areas of Toronto, so very sparse car depended Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York definitely don't belong to that category, nor do any peripheries of old Toronto such as East York, the beaches etc. as they are essentially not so much different from Scarborough.

Developments built in the 1950's and on are more car-oriented than those built before WWII.

 

[TrickyRicky]

It takes incredible momentum to even maintain existing job or population numbers in a given geographic area. The amount of energy required to add jobs and population to an already built-up area is not just hard it is Herculean.

 

[urbandreamer]

I expect a trend reversal going forward. Developers are tweeting like crazy their latest lowrise suburban sprawl developments. Meanwhile they're holding back on launching highrise product.

My bold prediction: 60% of 2013 GTA presale homes will be lowrise--townhomes, semis, detached--the majority in the 905.

The condo kids will be producing kids this decade. Sure the wealthier 10%ers will be able to buy homes in the 416, but the majority of those lower middle class kids will be moving back "home" to the 905.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I don't know if your prediction will come true urbandreamer, I suspect most of the growth in the region will still and always be in the 905. But what I do know is that people and families who move out of the core and the Yonge Street Spine will likely never be able to move back. Every middle to low income family cashing out of the old City of Toronto is being replaced by university educated people with family incomes above $100,000. The 1 and 10 percent have spoken and they are betting on the city.

 

[Jaye101]

I think all areas will see strong growth, but in the future I can't see the 905 outpacing the 416. And I don't think it would be good for the city either.

The 416 will become increasingly popular due to the 150km+ being added to our rapid transit network, but the extent of it's success depends mostly on how everything is planned.

Scarborough alone will see ~60 km of Light Rail added to it's landscape. This will transform the built form of Scarborough. But it's how we plan it that will determine the extent of it's success. Scarborough City Centre is going to have several stations that could help build a walkable network of streets. Agincourt and Malvern will also see an urbanization as the effects of the Sheppard East LRT develop throughout the years. Eglinton WEST of Kennedy is probably one of the poorest built areas in the 416 and that will also see significant development.

We should be creating master plans for the future of major blocks in the Suburban 416 and one of the first ones should be Midland to McCowan - Ellesmere to the 401. If we can recreate the road network into a linear, mixed use, dense network of pedestrian scaled streets lined with lowrises and retail, built around LRT stations and future LRT stations (such as Brimley) then the future will be bright.

If we let the developers create proposals within the current landscape we'll see suburban point towers in nodal development along a strip (ala NYCC MCC). What we need is a dense NETWORK of streets built with mostly lowrises. If we do not redraw the maps of poorly designed and scaled streets we'll end up with the same inefficiencies we see in NYCC and MCC today. Traffic is worst along Yonge in NYCC than it is on Yonge Downtown.

Hopefully intellect prevails.

 

[doady]

If we let the developers create proposals within the current landscape we'll see suburban point towers in nodal development along a strip (ala NYCC MCC). What we need is a dense NETWORK of streets built with mostly lowrises. If we do not redraw the maps of poorly designed and scaled streets we'll end up with the same inefficiencies we see in NYCC and MCC today. Traffic is worst along Yonge in NYCC than it is on Yonge Downtown.

The road layout in and around NYCC is quite poor, they just used the existing concession road system.

Mississauga built Conferation Parkway and Rathburn as an alternative to Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe. Central Parkway is nearby also. With BRT and LRT, the traffic won't be as bad.

If the arterials are spaced too far, they have to be wider and carry more traffic. Fewer arterials also means fewer bus routes too, and so people have to walk further to get to the bus stop. Maybe too far to be an option.

Look at how close together King/Queen/Dundas/College are for example. That's something NYCC sorely lacks.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

The road layout in and around NYCC is quite poor, they just used the existing concession road system.

Mississauga built Conferation Parkway and Rathburn as an alternative to Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe. Central Parkway is nearby also. With BRT and LRT, the traffic won't be as bad.

If the arterials are spaced too far, they have to be wider and carry more traffic. Fewer arterials also means fewer bus routes too, and so people have to walk further to get to the bus stop. Maybe too far to be an option.

Look at how close together King/Queen/Dundas/College are for example. That's something NYCC sorely lacks.

Very true. I wish NYCC was done better. Sometimes I'd rather go there then downtown.

 

[TrickyRicky]

Keep in mind that as the central city becomes richer it will de-populate, counteracting the impact of the increase in total households that is driving overall population growth. On the contrary the 905 will in the future constitute a larger percentage of the total regional population. Add to that that some areas of the 905 will decline in wealth and crowd accordingly and massive greenfield development, it is almost a certainty that the 905 will dominate population growth numbers regardless of the strength of multi-residential household formation in the City of Toronto.

 

[BobBob]

^ I have to disagree. Increasing wealth leads to depopulation only within a fixed physical environment. In Toronto, we've seen massive development drastically increasing the overall number of households that can be accommodated in some areas, and I don't see a reason for this trend to discontinue. Any notion of the 416 being somehow full, or close to full, is simply wrong. It can accommodate millions more if we plan it properly.

 

[TrickyRicky]

BobBob, I'm not suggesting that Toronto won't grow but that it is more difficult to grow the population then we think because not only do you have to slot new multi-residential into the existing urban fabric, you also have to counteract the depopulation with wealth effect and decreasing house-hold size.

In the boomtown graphic note downtown how the shoulder neighbourhoods to the West and East where there is not a lot of new home construction occuring are actually seeing population declines. I would not be surprised if these areas are also seeing some of the fastest rising household incomes. This is also likely happening in the core, it's just that so much new high-rise muti-residential is being constructed that it overwhelms the other trends. Much of the "pop" in growth in zones like Trinity-Spadina is occuring on brown-field and under-utilized properties such as parking lots. There is a way to go but once the low-hanging fruit properties are developed slotting in that next extra building becomes a slower process.