Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
But that's because Mississauga is attempting to build an urban core on a greenfield site surrounded by sprawl. The greenfield site is huge, so they might be able to pull it off, but it'll always be a bubble. That is unless we mass demolish the tract house neighbourhoods around it and replace the cul de sacs and crescents with a street grid that can handle the traffic (of all kinds) of a dense, urban, walkable neighbourhood.
There is a long term plan to demolish the shopping mall that your linked picture was taken from and replace about a square mile of that remaining space with dense infill similar to the streetview that nite posted, but given the size of this development and the ability for the market to absorb all those units, that'll take decades.
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I don't think the "surrounded by sprawl" is such a big deal tbh. As long as the Mississauga Center area can reach a certain critical mass.
The network of arterial and collector roads is quite dense. It's not like parts of suburban Atlanta that have only one arterial road every 2 miles.
The surrounding SFH neighbourhoods are reasonably dense too. The built density is probably higher than for more of the neighbourhoods surrounding Midwestern downtowns.
There's some cul-de-sacs, but most of them have walkways at the end to give pedestrians a way out.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5873...7i16384!8i8192
For any missing connections, there's no need to raze the neighbourhoods wholesale, just to acquire a 5-10 foot wide sliver of land to build some new walkways. You could probably do that by upzoning/density bonusing developers that agree to transfer a narrow strip of their land for those walkways.
From the time I've spent in the area, mainly on trips to Square One or on bike rides through Central Mississauga, I'd say one problem is that it currently still feels like disjoined clusters of highrises. That's at least as much due to the arterial roads, mainly Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe that function as barriers, as it is due to the Square One parking lots. These are both wide, very high volume, high speed roads, with not much along them to draw pedestrians. Confederation Parkway is quite wide too, but the ground level retail and the design of the public realm makes for a much better urban environment that's much more akin to a typical downtown Toronto street.
Overall, I'd say Mississauga Center has a few assets in terms of vibrancy, activity, etc. In no particular order.
1) MCC Transit Terminal. I've taken the bus through here a few times. The connections to Mississauga and beyond are really quite good, with routes fanning out in every direction, many express routes, high frequency routes, long distance routes... It makes you feel like you can conveniently go almost anywhere by bus. It's a very busy terminal too, giving it a sense of vibrancy. I'd love to see some retail pop up here to provide transit users a chance to grab a coffee, breakfast, lunch, etc. I suppose there's the Starbucks, Whole Foods and Square One food courts, but Mississauga should really take advantage of high volume transit hubs like this ASAP, get some big towers with 20 floors of office + 40 floors residential and ground floor retail built right next to the transit hub (or even on top of it).
2) Parkside Village/Confederation Parkway. As mentioned earlier, this is imo the best urbanism in Mississauga Center. It's also the most recently built, so it's a reflection of what we've learned from the mistakes of the past. You're much more likely to find people sitting at a restaurant's sidewalk patio here than anywhere else in Mississauga Center.
3) Celebration Square. Although I agree with Jane Jacobs that it's better to distribute civic buildings across a downtown than having them clustered all in one district, this square still works reasonably well. The city does a good job with programming, you've got food trucks stationed there relatively often, and decent usage even when there's no particular programming.
4. Kariya Park. This is a very nice little oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle, and I'm clearly not the only person to think so since it seems to always be well used.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5894...!7i8704!8i4352
5. Square One. I know shopping malls aren't that popular here, but fact of the matter is Canadian winters are long and I think it has the potential to work well with the surroundings. Just need to gradually redevelop certain parts of the property so that there's fewer parking lots, parking garages and blank walls along the public realm. The new additions have been a step in the right direction.
Right now, a big part of the problem is that the parts of MCC that work are all kind of disjointed from each other. However, I think that will improve significantly over the next few years as some of the gaps start to fill in. I think the Hurontario LRT and related road redesigns will also help make Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe feel a lot less like barriers.