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Sure maybe ... but to fair a lot of those jobs were industrial / manufacturing ... while some of these have left the 416 for the surrounding 905 (and other area codes) the majority have simply left all together ...
So it's not as if a lot of these areas used to be office parks that were simply left to decay ... they were industrial zoned employment lands, something that we all know wasn't going to last in Toronto (not to the extent there used to be) ... and that's nothing the city or anyone else can do anything about.

Actually from what I recall ... Toronto has a fairly low industrial tax rate .. lower then our neighborhoods I think ? ... maybe? not sure but either way this isn't the best comparison.

Now in terms of the waterfront I do hope some of this area does get turned into office space ... if you look at their counts it should be and there will be some office zoning / but it would be pretty bad if it was residential.
 
taal said:
Actually from what I recall ... Toronto has a fairly low industrial tax rate .. lower then our neighborhoods I think ? ... maybe? not sure but either way this isn't the best comparison.
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No, the industrial tax rate is multiple times higher than the residential tax rate. See this link for the numbers.

In terms of changing industrial zoning to other uses, what's happening in a lot of areas in Toronto is understandable given how a lot of the industrial lands are located far from highways and the fact that trucks would have to run through residential areas to reach the industrial lands which relied on train transportation. Industrial/residential mixed use can be unpleasant for all parties, particularly given the fact that so much freight is moved by trucks today. Commercial/residential is more palatable.
 
There are still a fair number of factories in Scarborough that are close to the RT line. It seems that industry in the core is dead, but there are parts of Toronto that are still industrial, and hopefully won't move to the 905.
 
I'd say that for the most part, it's going to be very hard to reverse the car culture and sprawl. The only way I can see that being accomplished is to knock down a bunch of buildings and turn it back into farmland (will be very hard to do, but I'd love that for a few areas.) Creating density nodes to connect the region together is really the best way to accomplish it. I don't get why it's always a Toronto vs. 905 argument. The Toronto suburbs, for the most part, have the same commuting problems as the 905, and therefor a solution is needed for that one problem. Avenueization and density nodes are really the best ways to do that, because it gives dots to connect and lines to connect them with. Between them, you can serve other suburban areas with transit, building up more density along those areas and continuing to spread it outwards.
So in that sense, trying to suck all the businesses and industry to downtown will definitely not work. If the city only extended up to Eglinton and VP and Jane, then it might work. But in such a massive region as the GTA (and GGH as well,) trying to get everyone back to the core will just result in an even more car-cultured and desolate suburban wasteland outside of it than before.

And on factories and manufacturing, I think they've been leaving the Western World en masse for some time now. As East and South Asia become more and more developed, I think a lot of the industry will bounce back, fueled by green technology and all the growth that happened since it started leaving. But until then, the GTA's going to be pretty low in industry.
 
To have a vibrant Toronto with high density, there needs to be high property values. To have industry in Toronto, there needs to be low property values. There is a conflict here, you can't have both. If there is demand for commercial and residential for a certain piece of land, then the commercial and residential will always outbid and out-compete the industrial for that land.

Industry belongs in the suburbs where the land is cheapest and plentiful. Industry by their nature are dirty, low density and segregated, and therefore directly conflict with goals of healthy, vibrant, dense, mixed-use, urban neighbourhoods. Commercial and residential can be mixed, but industry must remain separate. And a lot of industries today are reliant on trucking and just-in-time production systems. Do you really want trucks roaming though city streets?

The best way to reduce sprawl and gridlock is for people work near where they live. If they live in the suburbs, then they should work in the suburbs. If they live in the city, then they should work in the city. Therefore trying to attract industry into the core of Toronto is pointless.
 
^^ But you can't control where people live and work. Some people might work in the suburbs, but live downtown. Others might live in Mississauga but work in Markham. At this point, it's all convoluted and the only way to improve that is improve transit all over the city. It's not as efficient as funneling everyone downtown in increasingly wide U's, but in the end it'll result in a strong and thoroughly livable region.

I disagree that you can't have any industry and residential mixed together. If you have a building that's a shop or clothes factory or whatever on the first two floors, then another three or four of apartments, those apartments will certainly be livable. Of course, you won't be sticking condos above auto manufacturing plants or chemical factories, but that lighter and generally more hands on industry is possible to integrated with residential. You can see how it can work in slums in developing nations, like those in Mumbai. Given, they're obviously not going to be $600k units that you see starting at in downtown, but they won't be overly bad, I don't think. And if you put relatively cheap apartments above industry, you're sure to get some people working there too.

Trucking can be solved by freight trams, as in Amsterdam, or by reintegrating industry to the rail network.
 
Cloth factories?? ... yes other then designer posh boutiques making there own cloth no such thing exist in North America ... very very few of them.

And no I disagree, they can't mix ... they never will ... when we say industry we're talking about factories / warehousing ... the first just can't mix and the other requires cheap land.


Anyway, Toronto should focus on attracting high tech positions ... the positions that are currently in Markham and the like ...
 
The only reason they don't exist in North America is because the textiles market is massively dominated by overseas producers. This is a pretty big industrial low in the Western World, which will decrease as the East becomes more industrialized and demands higher wages and living standards.

I don't mean factories and warehousing when I say industry. I'm talking about very light things like carpentry or metalworking shops, repair shops, and small scale local manufacturing. That's been demonstrated to work universally. It can be found to work well with good living and working conditions in Toronto. Maybe not immediately, but as the city matures and density builds up through Commercial/Residential mixed use.
 
We could do with some more chocolate factory, like the Cadburys factory that integrates quite well with it's residential neighbors on Gladstone Avenue
 
kettal said:
We could do with some more chocolate factory, like the Cadburys factory that integrates quite well with it's residential neighbors on Gladstone Avenue
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Peek Freens works well on O'Connor as well. There are lots of successful factories in the GTA, they haven't all moved to China, but lots have moved just outside the border of Toronto.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Peek Freens works well on O'Connor as well. There are lots of successful factories in the GTA, they haven't all moved to China, but lots have moved just outside the border of Toronto.
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I really don't think that people are really aware of what has developed outside of the city. Perhaps you could post some pics?
 
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