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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
The quality of new development is probably a tier above Toronto's too, on average. And it's got more character than people usually give it credit for - that rough-around-the edges port town vibe is still very present in most of the areas I spent time in. The weird 90s industrial, vaguely Scandinavian aesthetic of Mt. Pleasant (my neighbourhood for the duration of the trip) is cool too.
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I would agree with all of this, and those are pretty astute observations.
I know several Vancouver planners pretty well, and I get the impression that their planning department is very design-forward, and has been since before planners even thought about design in North America (i.e. the 1970s). Most of the old bigwigs are urban designers, by training, and the development-planning relationship is kind of incestuous (as in, ex-planners work for big developers, and vice versa not [necessarily] that they're sleeping with each other). If planners want to enshrine some kind of social policy, they often do it using design as a bit of an instrument, whether for good or for bad.
I always thought Vancouver's industrial areas were a bit more versatile for small startups than Toronto's, since they was a lot of areas where you had buildings with medium-sized floorplates and access for trucks in the alleyway, but it still had a street-facing sidewalk presence and the areas were part of the same grid as the residential areas. Toronto doesn't really have that except in a few places, like Geary Ave. which, predictably, generate new businesses and vibrancy quite spontaneously. Otherwise, you're stuck shoving the industrial-side of your operations in some windowless bunker near Lawrence and Keele or in South Etobicoke where the buses hardly run and the walking experience is terrible.
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Generally a fan of the north/east side of the city and the northern Metro Van suburbs (North & West Vancouver, even Burnaby & Port Moody kinda). I can see the appeal of living in one of those areas. On the other hand, not a big fan of basically anything south of Broadway - it gets really suburban really quickly, without the dramatic setting to make up for it.
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Yeah, it can get suburban very quickly, but I find that given the era of construction, areas that are functionally suburban are a lot older in Toronto than in Vancouver. Again, things like having a grid with alleys really helps. It avoids having all these driveways, and you can also stash the commercial parking in the rear or, if the area urbanizes, underground with alley access.