[Memph]

Assuming most of us here are "urbanists", are you familiar with the GTA's suburbs, basically anywhere outside Old Toronto? Or is it just that forbidden land north of Bloor that "why would anyone want to go there"?

Like I assume most here, I've driven on the highways through the GTA, and visited the main attractions like Wonderland and Square One, but that only gives you a very superficial feel for these communities.

However, I've also gone on several bike rides across the GTA which is starting to give me a feel for the whole suburban GTA. Some communities live up to the stereotypes, others don't. Here's a map of where I've been so far (I haven't included every trip I've gone on in Old Toronto, there's too many of those).

Here's what I got out of those bike rides.

Part 1

One of the earlier bike trips was a few years ago, going up along the Humber River to Rexdale. As I was going along the trails through Rexdale, I started to hear loud cheering and screaming in the distance, wondering what was going on. After an hour or so, I made my way back down Islington towards Thistletown and saw big crowds celebrating and waving Indian flags. That's when I thought "oh yeah, didn't I read the cricket world cup finals were today?". Looks like spontaneous gatherings can still happen in the suburbs.

Then checked out the Jane-Finch/Black Creek area. Biking along Driftwood, Gosford, Jane, Finch and some of the side streets, it didn't seem like such a bad area (I didn't go into the TCHC complexes though). It mostly just seemed like a diverse, relatively vibrant working class neighbourhood. Lots of kids, people seemed friendly, a lot of ethnic retail.

However the intersection of Jane-Finch seems like it could use some place-making. This is the main intersection of a community where a significant portion of the population uses transit and 25%+ of households are car-free, and at the junction of two very busy bus routes where there's always a small crowd at the bus-stops. Even a little coffee shop to hang-out and stop by while on-the-go would be nice. Something other than a couple gas stations and rather large parking lots. Even by suburban standards its underwhelming, there are plenty of similar intersections in suburban Toronto that have retail near the intersection, even if it's just a few shops with a lot of the other retail further back behind a parking lot (ex Vic Park and Sheppard). I think Jane-Finch is Toronto's busiest suburban intersection for pedestrians outside NYCC by a decent margin.

 

[Memph]

Now as for Milliken/Steeles, I biked out to the area last Thursday when it was 20C out. There was a substantial number of people out and about in the Pacific Mall area, much of them on bicycles, much of them elderly Chinese. One elderly Chinese man made quite an effort to compliment me on my bicycle despite not speaking any English.

Looking around the edges of Pacific Mall/Market Village and their parking lots, I was wondering if there were going to be any bike racks there, but nope. Instead, there must have been at least a hundred bikes locked to trees and cart corrals, or sometimes just unlocked laid against the building walls (you can see this on street view too). This area did seem to be a noteworthy outlier for bike use in suburban Toronto. Even if you compare to other lower income suburban areas, the people not driving there seem to be mostly taking the bus or walking with only a few biking, even in neighbourhoods that seem to also have a fair bit of elderly Chinese like closer to Bridletown or Agincourt. Milliken was not quite Queen West for biking but it could have very well been closer to that than to other suburban areas. That's despite having much more high-speed roads and often having to just bike on the sidewalk. That's one thing about the suburbs, you have these arterials with very wide ROWs, and they're often the only direct route from A to B, because unlike Old Toronto the residential streets are winding in every direction, and unlike Old Toronto, traffic speeds are too high to bike on the main roads. Unless you have a death-wish, the best option is often to go on the sidewalk, but it can be uncomfortably tight to overtake pedestrians, even at low speeds.

Is there any particular reason why there aren't just multi-use trails along most of the GTA's arterials? They'd only have to be a few feet wider than the current sidewalks, and the arterials often include 20+ ft of grass in their ROW. Eglinton in Etobicoke and Burnhamthorpe and Winston Churchill in Mississauga have them but I think that's it.

 

[Memph]

There are of course suburban neighbourhoods that do fit the stereotypes pretty well - Windfields, Sunnylea, Sheridan Homelands, Sunningdale. Those 4 are mostly older (50s-70s) suburbs, and are either boring or tranquil depending on your POV. Along with the older housing stock, the population seems older, fewer children, more empty nesters. The newer subdivisions have more young families, which combined with smaller lots do make the neighbourhoods noticeably more lively, at least in nicer weather during after school hours.

 

[Johnny Au]

There are of course suburban neighbourhoods that do fit the stereotypes pretty well - Windfields, Sunnylea, Sheridan Homelands, Sunningdale. Those 4 are mostly older (50s-70s) suburbs, and are either boring or tranquil depending on your POV. Along with the older housing stock, the population seems older, fewer children, more empty nesters. The newer subdivisions have more young families, which combined with smaller lots do make the neighbourhoods noticeably more lively, at least in nicer weather during after school hours.

It also makes trick-or-treating more fun as well.

 

[Jonny5]

Assuming most of us here are "urbanists", are you familiar with the GTA's suburbs, basically anywhere outside Old Toronto? Or is it just that forbidden land north of Bloor that "why would anyone want to go there"?

I am from west Hamilton, so I know it and Burlington very well. My parents still live there so I visit a a few times a year.

I moved to Toronto in 2005 and have since lived (very close by to) the following places:

Wellesley/Jarvis
Queensway/Royal York
Parliament/Carlton
Dupont/Dundas/Old Weston
Danforth/Coxwell
Davenport/Oakwood
Mt. Pleasant/Davisville
Parliament/Dundas

They all had their pluses and minuses in particular ways. At three of those places I lasted for only about 6 months due to intolerable roommates. I lived at Dundas/Parliament the longest, about 4 years.

I have mostly worked in offices in the core, though I spent a year up at Yonge/St. Clair.

I moved to the Dundas Street/Mississauga Road area just over a year ago, and am satisfied with it too. Downtown really only appealed to me because of proximity to my friends, though my best friend actually lives at Eglinton/Kingston and I have been out there several times a year for the past 10 years.

I have little interest in the cultural offerings of the city. It is rare there is a concert or festival that I want to attend. I often have a "been there done that" feeling about events, perhaps because I am extraordinarily cynical type (at least I am self-aware of it!), though at street festivals I always got the impression many were the same old vendors just moving from one location to the next. I also do not like restaurant dining at all. I think I have been in a restaurant only twice so far this year. I did have several amazing take-out options very close to my place at Dundas/Parliament which I miss, but now I make almost all my meals at home which is better for me in the long run (especially not having access to the butter chicken made by the diner at the north-west corner of Dundas/Parliament). If I really want to see museums or art shows I can get downtown on the weekend very easily. I do go to a lot of events at the ACC; Leafs games, and Rock games; but getting to the ACC is a breeze coming in on GO, if I am not even just going there right after work.

Indeed, my daily commute is significantly more pleasant than any TTC commute I previously had. When I was at Parliament/Dundas I walked to work in about 30 minutes every day because I was simply not able to tolerate the streetcars. I did enjoy walking, even in winter, and I promptly gained 15 pounds in the months after I moved to Mississauga! I don't miss the pedestrian rage from trying to navigate King or Yonge Street every afternoon (sorry, I am not stepping on to the road so your family of 8 can walk past me occupying the entire sidewalk).

I really appreciate how quiet my neighbourhood is. I am a very light sleeper and having peace at night is important to me. In Hamilton I grew up near the University so there were lots of student rentals nearby with wild parties until 4:00AM which pissed me off to no end (until I was 17 and was at those parties). Ironically the quietest neighbourhood in which I have lived, even quieter than my corner of Mississauga, was Cabbagetown. On winter nights I swear you could hear the bells from the GO trains on the Lakeshore line it was so dead quiet.

All that being said I don't think I have been north of Eglinton in about 4 years in fact I don't think I have been north of Richmond Street in the past year in the old city. I have been to Scarborough a lot to see my friend as mentioned above, but since I lived in Etobicoke in 2006-07 I have done no more than pass through it on the GO train.

As for the rest of the GTA: before badly injuring a knee a few years ago I did a lot of cycling through rural Halton and Peel, so I know them quite well. I haven't been to York region in at least 20 years. I have been through Durham on the highways a few times, but not much else.

 

[Memph]

It also makes trick-or-treating more fun as well.

Yeah, that's a contrast I experienced growing up. In the 90s we lived in a neighbourhood of townhouses. They were built late 70s I think, so you did start having a few empty nesters, but still mostly <50 years old, and a few young adults, but still a lot of families and of course townhouses meant the homes were close together. Then in the 00s we lived in a much lower density neighbourhood with 50s/60s homes, there were a few kids but probably as many seniors. The townhouse neighbourhood was much better for trick-or-treating, we had a lot more people coming to our house there, and also a lot more houses within a couple blocks where the residents put a lot of effort in. In the low density neighbourhood we sometimes just got driven around looking for places to trick-or-treat.

The demographic difference can pretty be significant. Here's the breakdown for the federal electoral districts of Etobicoke Centre, mostly 50s-60s suburbia vs Brampton West, which is mostly post-2000. Data is from 2011 NHS.

Etobicoke Centre
Age 0-19: 24,670 (21.5%)
Age 20-34: 18,470 (16.1%)
Age 35-64: 48,270 (42.0%)
Age 65+: 23,500 (20.5%)

Brampton West
Age 0-19: 33,545 (33.0%)
Age 20-34: 21,505 (21.1%)
Age 35-64: 40,415 (39.7%)
Age 65+: 6,295 (6.2%)

And within those groups Brampton West skews more towards young children vs teenagers for Etobicoke Centre.

Jonny: I'm not surprised Cabbagetown was the most quiet, Bloor and the DVP would probably be the noisiest and there's a lot of big trees to keep out the noise from there. Parliament and Gerrard are closer, but less noisy and the close together homes and mature trees are probably enough to block out any noise pretty well. It definitely seems quite quiet when I go there. I left out Hamilton but I have gone biking there several times as well, along the beach, all along the escarpment from Stoney Creek to Aldershot checking out the waterfalls, the inner city and Dundas Conservation Area.

 

[Memph]

For the Brampton trip on the map, I went in early October, on a nice fall day, partly to check out the neighbourhood of my early childhood, near Loafers Lake. Loafers Lake and the soccer fields just north of it were always a fairly popular part of the Etobicoke Creek park system, and still are. The park has been improved, with new trails and extensions north of Mayfield. A new playground and work-out stations with various types of equipment were built all around the soccer fields and seemed to be relatively well used.

I also checked out the neighbourhood I call "Little Punjab" which I think is was the first Sikh immigrant immigrant enclave in Brampton, just west of Nanaksar Sahib Gurdwara, which I believe was the first in Ontario. That area was largely developed around the short period of time when basement apartments were forced to be made legal between 1994 and 1995, before being made illegal in Brampton except for those that got grandfathered in. As a result, this is one of the few areas of Brampton that is able to meet the demand for this form of affordable housing and has very high average number of occupants per house (6-7) and is also rather low income, somewhat unusual for a neighbourhood of 1990s snout houses. However, despite the suburban snout houses, it did feel more vibrant than most suburban neighbourhoods, with many grandparents walking around and taking their grandchildren to the playground. Garages sometimes play the role of porches, providing some protection from the elements while still allowing residents to watch over the street. In other suburbs, kitchens might play a similar role, however these houses are too narrow to have any ground floor rooms facing the street. It's often older people sitting out there, so maybe the grandparents often live in the basement and don't have any good windows, not even to the backyard, so I guess it could be understandable that they'd want to hang out in (or in front of) the garage.

Examples:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6455...4!1sQbujVKY5C2wBqt2ceeSbgg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6458...4!1s2u5MFBnMgDHIQWAGin8ORQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

You could smell curry all throughout the neighbourhood, so clearly very Indian, my impression was about 90-95%.

It's definitely different from some parts of Oakville where you rarely see anyone outside, not even to mow the lawn since they have landscaping crews to do that, it's pretty much only if they're walking their dog.

 

[stanko]

It's definitely different from some parts of Oakville where you rarely see anyone outside, not even to mow the lawn since they have landscaping crews to do that, it's pretty much only if they're walking their dog.

What parts of Oakville gave you that impression? I sure hope you're not talking about West Oak Trails, which has been developed on pretty much the same grounds as that part of Brampton and fits the description you just gave. If you had to make me guess in what town those examples you gave were I would've thought they were maybe 1km from my house

 

[Memph]

What parts of Oakville gave you that impression? I sure hope you're not talking about West Oak Trails, which has been developed on pretty much the same grounds as that part of Brampton and fits the description you just gave. If you had to make me guess in what town those examples you gave were I would've thought they were maybe 1km from my house

Mostly the older suburban neighbourhoods of south Oakville.

West Oak Trails is indeed rather different from South Oakville but there are differences compared to Brampton. The park/trail system, not including 16 Mile Creek is not as mature as Etobicoke Creek in Brampton where the adjacent neighbourhoods are 1-2 decades older and you have more mature trees throughout (although both have mature woods that predate the area's development). I had lots of big old willow trees to climb as a kid in Brampton though which I don't remember seeing in West Oak Trails.

Etobicoke Creek is also a bigger creek with a bigger valley, and also big enough to require bridges which means the trails can go under the bridges and you can go all the way from Downtown Brampton to Caledon without a single (at grade) road crossing while the trails in West Oak Trails cross streets rather frequently and lack curb cubs for bikes and lack crosswalks (so you have to do a little jog each time). Etobicoke Creek valley being bigger also makes you feel further removed from the housing subdivisions when you're on the trails too, and there's more wild apple trees that give it a county feel. The Etobicoke Creek park system in Brampton seemed to have more playgrounds and sports fields too, at least that was my impression.

Now this is describing the park system as a whole, the section around Loafers Lake from Sandalwood to Conservation Dr is nicer still with the play and work out equipment sprinkled around and paved trails. That section also has a much greater variety of "environments" from wooded areas to meadows to grass and sports fields to a nice little lake. I would say that the Etobicoke Creek trails and the ones in West Oak Trails including 16 Mile Creek get relatively light use but the Loafers Lake area gets noticeably more use when the weather is nice.

In terms of street level vibrancy, I would say West Oak Trails is similar to many parts of Brampton including the neighbourhoods around Etobicoke Creek and a lot of other GTA neighbourhoods built in the last 20-30 years. But "Little Punjab" definitely feels busier.

 

[ksun]

Why is Square One an "attraction"?

Anyway, it is not that the suburbs are bad area, but that you seldom have a real reason to go unless you have family/friends there. Plus, I don't have a car, how am I supposed to go to Vaughan? Even if I take GO, after arrive at the station, then what?

To me the concept of urban Toronto is bound by the Gardiner to the south, Woodbine on the east, Keele on the west and a couple of blocks north of Eglinton on the north. In reality, I go north of College st probably 3 times a month, not to mention north of Bloor. It is really not that what the suburbs don't have, it is about I pretty have access to everything I need south of College st downtown.

 

[prosperegal]

I spent the early part of my life in the Bayview/Steeles area and then my middle and high school years in Hoggs Hollow. I'm downtown now. As a child and teen, my family and I rarely ventured to what's now the 905 - other than Markham for Chinese food (and that was not until the late 80s/early 90s when the community grew significantly). So while I was in the "inner" suburbs, the 905 area - other than Hwy 7/404 - was pretty much a no-go.

 

[stanko]

Hmm well even before I moved to Oakville and lived in Old East York I can't say I explored much of the 905 besides Mississauga (lots of members of the Serbian community throughout Southern Ontario find themselves in Sauga because that's where St. Sava Orthodox Church and Oplenac Cultural Centre are located) and to Oakville where my cousins had already moved years before us.

Besides that, I've only been to Vaughan twice and Markham once at Pacific Mall. East GTA I've still yet to touch, though I don't think I really want to. I've spent time at truck stops in Milton (though I've also been there at Kelso Conservation Park in both summer and winter) and Brampton since my dad was a truck driver and my mom would drag me and my sister to these places to pick him up. That's really about it.

 

[Memph]

Why is Square One an "attraction"?

Anyway, it is not that the suburbs are bad area, but that you seldom have a real reason to go unless you have family/friends there. Plus, I don't have a car, how am I supposed to go to Vaughan? Even if I take GO, after arrive at the station, then what?

To me the concept of urban Toronto is bound by the Gardiner to the south, Woodbine on the east, Keele on the west and a couple of blocks north of Eglinton on the north. In reality, I go north of College st probably 3 times a month, not to mention north of Bloor. It is really not that what the suburbs don't have, it is about I pretty have access to everything I need south of College st downtown.

That's why I like to explore places by bike, especially the more suburban areas. It's a good balance between going too fast to be able to take in your surroundings and fast enough to cover decent ground.

It does seem like people here on UT are confirming my suspicions though, if you split up the GTA into sectors of about 0.5-1.5m million people each, people tend to stick to their sector and rarely venture outside of it. I grew up in the western GTA and my family rarely ventured outside Mississauga/Halton, maybe a couple trips to downtown each year, and the occasionally trip to Canada's Wonderland, and that's it.

 

[prosperegal]

That's why I like to explore places by bike, especially the more suburban areas. It's a good balance between going too fast to be able to take in your surroundings and fast enough to cover decent ground.

It does seem like people here on UT are confirming my suspicions though, if you split up the GTA into sectors of about 0.5-1.5m million people each, people tend to stick to their sector and rarely venture outside of it. I grew up in the western GTA and my family rarely ventured outside Mississauga/Halton, maybe a couple trips to downtown each year, and the occasionally trip to Canada's Wonderland, and that's it.

I probably wrote this somewhere else, but these days, I rarely venture much north of Lawrence (and I go up that's where I play tennis), too far east of Bayview or much west of Bathurst. South? Yes, I do make it to the Toronto Islands in the summer.

 

[wild goose chase]

It does seem like people here on UT are confirming my suspicions though, if you split up the GTA into sectors of about 0.5-1.5m million people each, people tend to stick to their sector and rarely venture outside of it. I grew up in the western GTA and my family rarely ventured outside Mississauga/Halton, maybe a couple trips to downtown each year, and the occasionally trip to Canada's Wonderland, and that's it.

Seems to be my experience too. Many Torontonians seem to be creatures of habit (Almost reminds me of the concept of the "home range" as applied to animals by zoologists tracking them) and there are often geographic splits such as between those who spend more time between eastern and western parts of the GTA, in addition to the split between urbanites and suburbanites who occasionally venture into each others' realms, but mostly stick to their familiar haunts.