Population wise, maybe, but Mississauga lacks the developed core of a standalone city. It's still to some degree a bedroom community to Toronto with a lot of people commuting there for work. There's no CBD to speak of, with many of its bigger employers spread out in campus-style office parks. It'll get there one day, but right now despite all the new condo towers it still feels relatively suburban and sprawling.
I can’t think of many that come close to what we have here. Some US suburbs have significant skylines but lack the large population base, such as Bellevue WA, Clayton MO, and Ann Arbor, MI.
In some ways I agree with you. But I grew up not far from Scarborough city hall and we never went there for any event. We always went to Scarborough town centre.
Sometimes I wander through Celebration Square, but I am more often downtown. Both are a trip for me.
I spent a lot of time downtown when I was in Scarborough. Almost none at STC. In fact if I wanted a mall we went to Fairview. Downtown will always be a bigger draw but there’s no denying the events that take place at celebration square or living arts centre. Sheridan in the core makes a difference versus centennial outside of STC. There’s some small parks and of course the library. Nothing will compete with downtown Toronto but as MCC grows so will the amenities.
Yup. It feels like I hear there’s no pedestrians in Mississauga all the time. But confederation, living arts drive, Duke of York all contest that negativity. If what’s happened in these areas keep happening in the new areas than there will be an urban core.
I'm at Hurontario and Elm so the western edge of MCC is a bit of a walk for me. Hurontario is one of the most important streets in Mississauga, and it's not very urban all things considered. A lot of buildings don't actually front onto Hurontario (I noticed this when I was curious what the street addresses along Hurontario were around here, and nothing actually has a Hurontario address nearby).
I’m your neighbour and to be honest it’s a bit frustrating on the east side. But I’m hopeful that all the development that happens going forward learns from what’s taking place on the west side. Plus the east side will have the lrt which is a big advantage.
Given that Hurontario seems likely to remain a traffic sewer/road, I think it would be better to have activity focus on parallel access streets. Because these wouldn't be serving a through-movement function, they can be relatively narrow like 24-28m (maybe 3 lanes wide + parking + buffer + bike lanes + wide sidewalk), low speed, low volume and relatively pleasant. No one will ever really want to sit on a patio facing Hurontario with the vehicle volumes that road needs to carry.
I don’t expect hurontario to ever have patios but the buildings should still face the street like university avenue. If we are going to put a lrt on hurontario and pretend it’s our Yonge street then we shouldn’t completely give up on the idea of making it more aesthetically pleasing. There’s no reason that the hotel at hurontario and burnamthorpe has above ground parking facing hurontario and there’s no reason Wide condos immediately to the south also has above ground parking facing hurontario. Also if those kaneef buildings were not towers in a park but pressed up to hurontario with retail on the bottom we would be having a whole different discussion.
Way too wide? That's a fairly typical urban street width.