Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
I was going to mention Toronto's post-war sprawlburbs as a good example. Most of them are fully built out at this point, but still rapidly growing - and as a result almost all of them are creating new high-rise city centres, building LRT & BRT, redeveloping shopping malls, and building TODs around new high-frequency commuter rail stations.
Mississauga is the most notable - in the 60s/70 its city centre looked like this:
Now:
And here's the longer term plan to continue filling it in, including upgrading the current BRT to LRT:
Also in Mississauga is the Lakeview Village redevelopment, which will add 8,000 residential units & 4,000 jobs:
Here's the long-term vision for Brampton. What's currently a sprawling industrial estate:
Is planned to transform into this over the next few decades:
Vaughan's city centre, which is in the process of developing a post-war industrial / big box wasteland around a new subway extension & BRT:
Langstaff Gateway redevelopment in Markham, which would add 15,000 residential units (plus commercial) around a commuter rail station:
It's also art of the larger Richmond Hill/Langstaff Gateway Urban Growth Centre, congruent with Richmond Hill's new city centre:
Markham's other city centre:
Still suburban, but at least they'll be dense.  |
The Brampton redevelopment isn't of an industrial estate though, it's of a golf course and sports complex west of Highway 410.
I wouldn't say that most Toronto's post-war suburbs are fully built out. A lot of them are still building subdivisions, it's mostly just Burlington, Mississauga and Newmarket that are built out, and Mississauga's growth has slowed significantly (Burlington and Newmarket were slower growing for a while). Vaughan is still building a lot of subdivisions around Kleinburg; Brampton and Milton all over the place; North Oakville; East Gwilimbury... even Markham, Ajax, Pickering, Aurora and Richmond Hill on a smaller scale.
The subdivisions are getting denser and denser though. I check them out every now and then and the playgrounds are often quite bustling whereas if you take your kid to your typical suburban playground it'll be pretty empty. And of course even though most suburbs are seeing greenfield development, it's not as much as before and that's because of the shift to highrises. Toronto should have a weighted density of around 20,000 ppsm in 2050 at this rate, which would put it roughly in between the current weighted densities of the Boston and New York urban areas.