Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
This is a take I generally agree with. The only tweak I would make is shifting Victoria to 5, same as Halifax.
Not sure where Saskatoon and Regina factor into this but I'd probably put them in at about 2.5. Roughly similar to Hamilton, just smaller.
Really the list mirrors population with only a couple of outliers... which in this case is basically Quebec, Victoria and Halifax getting a good lift from tourism.
It's interesting, because Canada doesn't really have the aforementioned Phoenix style city which has a huge population but not a ton of busy, urban downtown character.
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A lot of what makes a downtown vibrant (IMO) is the mixed-use medium density buildings. So, any city that had a large core prior to 1950 probably has a better shot at that 'vibrant' thing, simply because automobile transport hadn't taken off yet. One had to live close to use transit to get to work. People are naturally clustered together and automobile use is less convenient.
Any city that bloomed from 1950 though 1990 had more compartmentalized development. The core was the office district, industry was confined to industrial parks and people lived in the suburbs. The same mentality applied to suburban-style universities and cultural venues. Why bother to build cultural venues in high-density areas when you can plop it in a field in the suburbs and have everyone drive there? Toronto's suburbs are littered with pockets of super high-density towers, but I'd hardly call them vibrant, despite being super dense in areas.
Calgary and Edmonton were cities of <250,000 people in the 1950s and more represent that model of growth. To use an example to the south, compare New York City to Phoenix.
Unless the city is an outlier (like Vancouver), or had a recent bloom when being in the city was really in vogue again doesn't have the same vibe. It isn't a perfect explanation, but I think it accounts for the reason European and Eastern cities have more of the feel than North American western cities do.