I agree that from an investment perspective, that's pretty much all that counts. Also, design has everything to do with communities that function well or do not (including crime and poverty rates). That doesn't pertain to this intersection or building, because Yonge and Bloor is a very public intersection in a very well-heeled area. That building will be uniquely tall and of high design and quality materials. If you want to see how design of a planned community shapes behavior, look at the former Regent Park. This is something, Waterloo_Guy, that has been the subject of decades of urban planning research. This isn't the thread for that discussion. Suffice it to say that Regent Park had blind allies and no proper street grid running through it, so it was cut off from the wider community and became unsafe in pockets. The visionaries who built it thought they were doing something progressive, building a kind of 'city in a park', the Le Corbusian tower surrounded by park land, which in reality became a no-man's land. There are numerous examples of these housing projects. In Toronto alone you'll find them in Moss Park, the Jane and Finch corridor, Alexandra Park, St. Jamestown. These urban designs lend themselves to crime and poverty, though there are certainly other factors at play than the built form. It's always a bit of a disaster when a housing project contains one income level, especially when it's a very low one. That's why Crombie Park in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood is so successful, because it has a mix of income levels, public and private housing, and it integrates well with the community in terms of scale, materials, and street grid. Essentially it isn't a low income ghetto, which is what we have in the other communities I mentioned, although Regent Park and Alexandra Park are being rebuilt to change this.
