[Gord]

Do kids even care about a suburban lifestyle? Seems like a projection of suburban parents to me...

By the way, kids live in apartments, whether they're condo or rental, all over the suburbs. My building has lots of kids. And the park across the street is constantly busy. It's a very social place, with a lot of room to play.

But that's the difference; the fact that the apartments in the burbs are near large parks. Downtown doesn't have the quantity or size of parks that are found all over the burbs, within walking distance of home.

Do kids really even care about a particular lifestyle at all? All they really care about is having fun and I think the suburbs do a better job at accommodating that with their large parks, ravines, homes with big backyards, etc. I think there's more room for adventure and exploration for them there.

 

[W. K. Lis]

But that's the difference; the fact that the apartments in the burbs are near large parks. Downtown doesn't have the quantity or size of parks that are found all over the burbs, within walking distance of home.

Do kids really even care about a particular lifestyle at all? All they really care about is having fun and I think the suburbs do a better job at accommodating that with their large parks, ravines, homes with big backyards, etc. I think there's more room for adventure and exploration for them there.

The green space around most new condo and apartment building seem to be less used. Usually, the kids are chased out because of the noise and litter. With parks or school playgrounds nearby, they end up playing with kids from houses, making the green space around their buildings unused.

 

[Lenser]

Do kids really even care about a particular lifestyle at all? All they really care about is having fun and I think the suburbs do a better job at accommodating that with their large parks, ravines, homes with big backyards, etc. I think there's more room for adventure and exploration for them there.

Perhaps kids don't care about lifestyles, but teenagers do. As someone who grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa and then Misssissauga, I can tell you that there was a certain segment of us who couldn't get out of the burbs fast enough once we were in our teens. Boredom and isolation (and eternally, the crippling want for a car) were what I most keenly recalled. The action was always 'somewhere else' and as nice as the suburbs might have been for our folks, they were a cultural wasteland for us, a place where homogeneity was preferred over variety; where cookie cutter houses and instant subdivisions were linked up by low-rise strip malls and fast food joints - dubious pearls in rather ordinary necklace. As for the common perception that they're safer, I don't subscribe to that either. Lots of bored teens with predilections for drag racing, drug delinquincy, drinking and driving, b & e's for sport... I dunno how safe it all is.

No, not everyone felt that way. I have cousins who never left Mississauga and have made their careers based there. Maybe they're even the majority. But I was very, very happy to go to the heart of city, where I felt my assumptions and expectations would be challenged at every turn. Turns out that it's simply not that extreme a difference, but I still feel that I belong to the demographic which believes the burbs are comparatively sterile, narrow places where you get just that much more land to insulate yourself from your neighbours. I tend to think of them less as vibrant communities, but as mausoleums for the walking dead.

But hey, that's just me!

 

[adma]

Do kids really even care about a particular lifestyle at all? All they really care about is having fun and I think the suburbs do a better job at accommodating that with their large parks, ravines, homes with big backyards, etc. I think there's more room for adventure and exploration for them there.

Y'know, dense urbanity offers its own "adventure and exploration" opportunities, too. Maybe not of the same nature; but it does...

 

[Lenser]

Yeah... climbing malting silos and gantry towers for those massive billboard ads along the Gardiner, exploring under various bridges and in the ravines... getting into abandoned warehouses and industrial plants. No, not exactly getting back to nature but it's certainly adventure.

 

[taal]

But there are so many parks / ravines / all over Toronto, any many close to the core.
So any argument along those lines makes no sense.

 

[Lenser]

Ceratinly - there's both kinds of adventure available. All part of exploring what the city has to offer.

 

[kkgg7]

You think a 2 bedroom 600 sq ft condo is sufficient for 4 people? If 2 small condos are merged, obviously 1 kitchen would come one, and the 2 living room really means a more decent size of 1 living room. There would need to be renos done to merge 2 condos obviously. Once the prices drop on these condos i could see people doing that in the future. And its true that it is in North America this thing with children needing to be brought up in houses because its what people have been used to. A friend in my son's class from school came over from Barcelona for 2 years with his family. They just moved back to Barcelona and the mother told me they want to live in the city which means they need to live in a condo which is what they were living in before. We live in a house of less than 1100 sq ft and my son's friend said this house is a castle compared to where they were living in Barcelona. But its what they are used to. And as the mother told me also, the apartments there are 4-6 storey. You may find 9-10 storey further out of the city because people do not want them she says.

hi, I didn't imply a 600sf condo would accommodate a family of 4. I think 1000-1200 sf would be sufficient though. Two small kids should have no problem sharing a room.

It is not surprising that Barcelona people would prefer living in the city as they are used to the urban lifestyle. In general, urban life is more preferred by most people. Young people need to excitement, the opportunities to know others, while older people like the convenience of being close to hospitals, grocery stores etc. Suburban single family house living is suitable for families who only care about the family itself and is not interested in the rest of the world. Household work, the kitchen, the backyard, the front yard is pretty much their whole life. For them, even going out for a movie is sort of major thing.

I personally think the argument "kids need a backyard to play in" is lame. They don't. A backyard is an enclosed small patch of private land, with hardly anything interesting in it. What can kids do with it day after day? I never understood the obsession with having a private yard. kids should go out and interact with people, to see the street life, cultural events, instead of staring at safe but boring family houses and vast empty land everyday. It is through interaction with other people, all sorts of people that they learn how to treat others. And people is what the suburbs lack, not to mention people of different walks of life. A single family dominated area usually has similar demographic with more or less similar background, income etc, and that's boring.

 

[RC8]

For once I agree with kkgg7. I grew up part of my life in very odd circumstances. My family was well off in a South American country, where we lived in a nice apartment building with a pool and a park nearby. My father hired a full time private driver that would work for his business but would also take me and my aging grandfather wherever we needed to go. I lived about 25 minutes away from the nearest supermarket (walking), but my mother and I would undergo that on a regular basis because 'it was fun' in her eyes. I therefore felt like at any given time I could go and get things if I wanted to, even as a kid. The driver would pick me up from school, and I'd stop and get baguettes and cheese at a local bakery that then I'd make into my lunch when I got home. The driver would also pick up my friends and bring them over if I wanted them to come over, or take me to their place. Almost on a daily basis, the driver would drive me and my grandfather, who was a great friend of mine, to a cafe where we would talk, have a coffee, and laugh the afternoon away. Then we'd return home just like we got there.

Now, I didn't really live that much of an urban lifestyle in the sense that I didn't live in the fabric of the city or anything, but I look at my childhood as the most wonderful period of my life because I had freedom of mobility. If my friends hadn't been able to come over without their or my parents (who were at work), or if I hadn't been able to buy ingredients for my lunch, or if I hadn't been able to get from school to home easily and effectively, my life would have been much much worse. The cafe with my grandfather was my best-spent time by far.

All of that would have been impossible if I'd been a car-less teen in a North American suburb.

All of it would have been possible without the driver, without the car, and without the added logistics if I'd lived in a place where I could walk over to my friends' places, walk from school and buy local ingredients along the way, and walk with my grandfather to the nearest cafe.

Confining kids to their houses sounds like a terrible idea to me. My friends who grew up in suburban settings and have since moved to the city wouldn't want their kids to go through the same. I'm yet to hear from people who grew up in the city who think they would have been happier in a car-dependent suburban neighbourhood. I fully understand the desire as a parent to just take your kids away to a place where you can dedicate your life to them and protect them from the world... but from a kid's perspective growing up somewhere you don't need to drive is much preferable.

 

[Dandy Horse]

i would never raise a child in suburbia, its awful, for so many reasons. especially not bringing one up there that was born right around the time of peak oil. thats dumb.

 

[Lenser]

When I was 16 in Mississauga, you could slot a kid into one of two categories. You either had a car or you didn't - meaning you walked, took the bus, biked. But you didn't have anywhere near the mobility and flexibility of schedule that the car kids had. As for that category, many had their cars given to them by well-meaning and prosperous parents. A smaller percentage of kids took on blue collar jobs to get that car - they worked hard for their wheels. The kids who had cars given to them were often the ones who were the most reckless. I remember one guy who lived in a very well-to-do part of town - a wild guy who routinely rolled and totalled his cars. A new Jeep would give way to a new Camaro, and so on. In retrospect, it was pure folly. I don't know what his parents were thinking, but then again it was the 70s and weird stuff was going on.

............................................

I think the CBD of any prosperous city is always best served by a mix of transportation options, including a strong component of public transit, in whatever form. It's amazing how many drivers are willing to abandon the grind of their daily car commute if the transit options are not merely decent but very good and the scheduling sufficiently accommodating. And yes, gridlock is a huge contributing factor in encouraging drivers to seek out other ways to get to work. One of the shifts I think we're seeing is people making a conscious decision to try and live closer to where they work, to make the trip shorter, waste less time. That means time gained back for personal time - to go to the gym or catch a beer with friends at the end of the work day, to actually watch and engage with their kids as they grow up. Time spent in gridlock sucks the soul out of people. Energy prices too are driving this, although if gas were to suddenly become substantially cheaper again, the ever-outward urban sprawl pressure wave would rise accordingly, perhaps held in check this time by growing disgust with commuter gridlock, perhaps not.

Many people still hear the siren call of the car. Many of us were raised in a strongly pro-car culture. I don't know how it is with today's youth but I expect there's a demographic shift going on there, too (for one thing, the economy sure is different from the 60s and 70s). I think of Metric and that great lyric: buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car.

 

[FinchConnection]

I'm curious to know, does the city have an official policy on population growth? Are we just trying to keep things steady, is there an active interest in making the city much denser, etc?

My understanding is the big ticket to spurring economic and population growth is directly linked to high density transit, (subways, streetcars, rail links) - if thats the case, for the life of me I can't understand why city hall has squashed one transit plan after another. I've always felt that Toronto's potential has been hindered by the allowance of growth in the 905, rather than trying to retain all the growth within (metro toronto) city limits.

 

[kkgg7]

I'm curious to know, does the city have an official policy on population growth? Are we just trying to keep things steady, is there an active interest in making the city much denser, etc?

My understanding is the big ticket to spurring economic and population growth is directly linked to high density transit, (subways, streetcars, rail links) - if thats the case, for the life of me I can't understand why city hall has squashed one transit plan after another. I've always felt that Toronto's potential has been hindered by the allowance of growth in the 905, rather than trying to retain all the growth within (metro toronto) city limits.

not sure if there is such a policy or if it is because of the 905, but the transit issue has definitely held Toronto back from achieving its full potential.

We should first stop saying silly and self-comforting things like "Toronto has the second best public transit in North America", and admit we have a huge problem. This statement is meaningless. Toronto is the fouth largest cities among all US and CA cities, and Los Angeles shouldn't even count since taking the bus is a basically considered a poor people's thing. Whether TTC is better than Chicago's, is debatable, and I personally prefer having 8 subways lines any day. New York has three/four times the population of Toronto yet it has 26 subway lines, compared with 2/2.5 for TTC. There is really very little to be proud of.

Only by realizing that, by that I mean the fact thatToronto has a very outdated, inefficient, and insufficient transit system, can we push for something better. Unfornately the politicians are too busy with bickering with each other over their big egos than caring more about what the city really needs.

 

[gristle]

This statement is meaningless. Toronto is the fouth largest cities among all US and CA cities, and Los Angeles shouldn't even count since taking the bus is a basically considered a poor people's thing. Whether TTC is better than Chicago's, is debatable, and I personally prefer having 8 subways lines any day. New York has three/four times the population of Toronto yet it has 26 subway lines, compared with 2/2.5 for TTC. There is really very little to be proud of.

As a daily user of public transit in Toronto I just don't find it as woeful as you characterize it. Could it be improved? Sure. But having used transit in other Canadian and American cities (including the systems that use the buses that you say are for poor people) it compares quite favourably with the best of them.

In your comparison to other NA cities, you've neglected to include the streetcars - particularly the ROW lines. New York and Chicago don't have those types of lines. It'd be a shame to pretend that they don't exist - particularly since a lot of us use them every single day. They are actually quite efficient.

Also, not all politicians are bickering - as you contend. Some have advocated passionately for better transit for years. You characterize them as bickering only because they are arguing against the likes of mayor Ford who seeks to cripple transit development by opting for the most expensive type. Maybe you would like to direct your ire to the provincial and federal levels of government - who fund transit at a far lower rate than in the United States. American cities receive far more funding from the federal level than do Canadian cities - some five times more.

 

[hawc]

Perhaps kids don't care about lifestyles, but teenagers do. As someone who grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa and then Misssissauga, I can tell you that there was a certain segment of us who couldn't get out of the burbs fast enough once we were in our teens. Boredom and isolation (and eternally, the crippling want for a car) were what I most keenly recalled. The action was always 'somewhere else' and as nice as the suburbs might have been for our folks, they were a cultural wasteland for us, a place where homogeneity was preferred over variety; where cookie cutter houses and instant subdivisions were linked up by low-rise strip malls and fast food joints - dubious pearls in rather ordinary necklace. As for the common perception that they're safer, I don't subscribe to that either. Lots of bored teens with predilections for drag racing, drug delinquincy, drinking and driving, b & e's for sport... I dunno how safe it all is.

No, not everyone felt that way. I have cousins who never left Mississauga and have made their careers based there. Maybe they're even the majority. But I was very, very happy to go to the heart of city, where I felt my assumptions and expectations would be challenged at every turn. Turns out that it's simply not that extreme a difference, but I still feel that I belong to the demographic which believes the burbs are comparatively sterile, narrow places where you get just that much more land to insulate yourself from your neighbours. I tend to think of them less as vibrant communities, but as mausoleums for the walking dead.

But hey, that's just me!

Wow! Most articulate condemnation of suburbs I've ever read.