Why does Toronto have more "street-based" neighbourhoods than other Canadian cities?

[Docere]

While Toronto does have its well-defined "place-based" neighbourhoods with strong identities existing for many decades (Annex, the Beaches, Parkdale) a lot of other areas are relatively recent creations based on commercial strip/BIA or intersection (Yonge-Eglinton, Bloor West Village, Roncesvalles, the Danforth etc.) and if asked people who live in these areas will use these terms.

In contrast Montreal's neighbourhood names have held out more consistently, for longer and are based on parish names or old villages (i.e. Notre Dame de Grace, Hochelaga, Cote de Neiges etc.) Vancouver's neighbourhoods also lean more towards place-based identities (Mount Pleasant, Kitsilano, Kerrisdale etc.) though it does have a few commercial strip-based ones (Commercial Drive).

[LeftCoaster]

I'd say streetcars, but then again Vancouver was pretty streetcar focussed too so not sure.

[hipster duck]

The first is scale. Toronto is bigger than every other Canadian city, and only Montreal rivals Toronto for the sheer number of pre-war neighbourhoods that locals can name. Vancouver is a distant third, but still within comparison range.

In Montreal's case, I feel like the informal names for neighbourhoods cover a big area, and maybe it has to do with their borough system bleeding into informal place names. The boroughs are too big to be a single neighbourhood, but not so gigantic that you can't reasonably walk from one end to another, and they each have their mayor and council. I guess it would be acceptable for anyone to say they live in "The Plateau" if they live within the boundaries of the borough of Le Plateau Mont-Royal, even if that includes distinct, relatively famous areas within it like Mile End.

Vancouver is one step down: there are 22 official neighbourhoods with set boundaries. They're not led by mayors and city councillors, but they're used for planning purposes. So all of the famous ones like Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, the West End, etc. are all official, rather than colloquial. So people will say "I live in Kits" with no follow-up questions, although maybe they do all their shopping on Broadway near MacDonald rather than on West 4th Ave.

[someone123]

I was going to say that a lot of Vancouver neighbourhoods are in practice structured around some commercial artery like Broadway, even if they're part of a larger named district. This seems like a pretty standard growth pattern in Canada from 1890-1950 or so, and Toronto probably has the most growth from that period, plus the most growth afterward to flesh out those areas a bit more. Even the West End is like this with clear commercial development along Denman, Robson, and Davie, and much less on side streets. Calgary has 17th Ave or 9th Ave.

Halifax has the same thing. Quinpool Rd is a very classic example and looks a bit like a Toronto neighbourhood commercial street in some ways. It was developed with houses around the early 1900s and then filled in with shops by 1940 or so. The city had only a small fraction of the growth of Toronto so there are only a few examples. The older North End in Halifax is more mixed-use and does have "high streets" but there are a lot more random businesses sprinkled around. Some other streets are now expanding with commercial development; they used to have just a few isolated shops, often in converted houses, but now they're zoned for mixed-use buildings (Oxford or Chebucto for example).

[Docere]

Toronto's planning districts in 1956 (p. 47). The Annex, Rosedale, Parkdale and the Beach(es) are on the map, but many of today's neighbourhood names had not yet been coined and were part of some administrative planning areas without a real identity:

https://archive.org/details/changing...ge/47/mode/1up

[Doady]

Everything in Toronto is oriented to the east-west corridors, which in turn are oriented toward downtown and Yonge. In contrast, north-south streets are mostly residential and lack identity. Even in Annex, Spadina suddenly becomes a small side street.

It is like transit-oriented development vs. New Urbanism. TOD emphasizes a transit line, New Urbanism emphasizes a particular landmark. Building a corridor vs. building a centre. Toronto focused on building corridors. People think about the corridor before a centre.

Beaches got the beaches. Annex is like an enclave, and Casa Loma is nearby. The rest of Toronto is not like that.

[TorontoDrew]

Most Torontonians can only name a handful of the city's neighbourhoods. I remember when I moved to my current home in Riverside getting into a heated discussion with a real estate agent that Riverside was the name of the area, and she argued it all falls under Leslieville. She also talked about the Danforth like it was some high end exclussive neighbourhood, it's not. Not sure how she got into real estate.

[Surrealplaces]

Calgary hasn't really seen neighborhoods based on streets because we use numbered streets unfortunately. The area of Kensington is based off of Kensington road, but all others are named only after the neighborhood.

A couple of Calgary's inner city hotspots are however street car related. 'The Beltline' was the name of a street car line that looped around the area now known as the Beltline. Marda Loop was a endpoint where the street car line ended and looped around.

[logan5]

I've heard people from Mt. Pleasant say "Main Street" as their neighbourhood, as well as Mt. Pleasant. I never hear people say "Riley Park", which is another neighbourhood up Main (between 16th and 41st), so I would imagine those people just say "Main Street".

Technically, Olympic Village is in Mt. Pleasant, but people who live their will identify "Olympic Village" as the neighborhood they live in. Mt. Pleasant covers a large area.

[YOWetal]

Isn't it more than just naming convention but how these neighbourhoods are actually organzied. Toronto has big streets that form neighbourhoods with one kind of Main Street. Ottawa has this a bit though doesn't use the names. Meanwhile Montreal neighbourhoods have much more diffuse shopping and eating areas even in more suburban neighbourhoods.

Just an observation but there are exceptions.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by logan5

I've heard people from Mt. Pleasant say "Main Street" as their neighbourhood, as well as Mt. Pleasant. I never hear people say "Riley Park", which is another neighbourhood up Main (between 16th and 41st), so I would imagine those people just say "Main Street".

Technically, Olympic Village is in Mt. Pleasant, but people who live their will identify "Olympic Village" as the neighborhood they live in. Mt. Pleasant covers a large area.

I live in Olympic Village and if I sat Mt Pleasant, people think I live near Broadway and Main, or further south.

OTOH if I say Mt Pleasant to some rube south of the Fraser they have no idea where that is. But they recognize Olympic Village.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Most Torontonians can only name a handful of the city's neighbourhoods. I remember when I moved to my current home in Riverside getting into a heated discussion with a real estate agent that Riverside was the name of the area, and she argued it all falls under Leslieville. She also talked about the Danforth like it was some high end exclussive neighbourhood, it's not. Not sure how she got into real estate.

The name for that area has been in flux. Is it Riverdale or Riverside? Both Riverside and Leslieville are part of the larger Riverdale. Leslieville wasn't commonly used until the 2000s. Riverside was the name of the area when it was annexed by the city but the area soon became known as Riverdale.

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by Docere

The name for that area has been in flux. Is it Riverdale or Riverside? Both Riverside and Leslieville are part of the larger Riverdale. Leslieville wasn't commonly used until the 2000s. Riverside was the name of the area when it was annexed by the city but the area soon became known as Riverdale.

She actually was arguing that Riverside didn't exist.

[Innsertnamehere]

Hamilton actually has a lot of historic "main streets" as well - they just aren't as healthy as in Toronto, and some are just plain gone at this point and almost entirely vacant.

The healthy ones like Locke, Dundas, Westdale, Ottawa St, James North, and Concession St that are more well known.. But there are rougher ones like Kenilworth, Barton East, and Parkdale that have historic streetfronting storefronts that are basically just cooked at this point.

When I moved to Hamilton it surprised me at the sheer number of them for the size of city it is. It makes me feel like it's more of an early-20th Century Ontario thing, but Hamilton experienced depopulation leading to the degrading of a lot of the retail strips while Toronto grew massively keeping them generally healthy.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Hamilton actually has a lot of historic "main streets" as well - they just aren't as healthy as in Toronto, and some are just plain gone at this point and almost entirely vacant.

The healthy ones like Locke, Dundas, Westdale, Ottawa St, James North, and Concession St that are more well known.. But there are rougher ones like Kenilworth, Barton East, and Parkdale that have historic streetfronting storefronts that are basically just cooked at this point.

When I moved to Hamilton it surprised me at the sheer number of them for the size of city it is. It makes me feel like it's more of an early-20th Century Ontario thing, but Hamilton experienced depopulation leading to the degrading of a lot of the retail strips while Toronto grew massively keeping them generally healthy.

Good post overall but I have two nitpicks.

Given the theme of the thread, I do have to point out that Westdale is not like the others in that it's not named after a street. And very much a village/community type name (I don't know the history to know if ever was standalone at all).

And Dundas being a whole town before amalgamation makes it quite a bit different form the others.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Hamilton actually has a lot of historic "main streets" as well - they just aren't as healthy as in Toronto, and some are just plain gone at this point and almost entirely vacant.

The healthy ones like Locke, Dundas, Westdale, Ottawa St, James North, and Concession St that are more well known.. But there are rougher ones like Kenilworth, Barton East, and Parkdale that have historic streetfronting storefronts that are basically just cooked at this point.

When I moved to Hamilton it surprised me at the sheer number of them for the size of city it is. It makes me feel like it's more of an early-20th Century Ontario thing, but Hamilton experienced depopulation leading to the degrading of a lot of the retail strips while Toronto grew massively keeping them generally healthy.

Seems like pre-amalgamation Hamilton has rather weak neighbourhood identity. Besides Westdale which is rather separated from the core and home to McMaster University it's hard to think of any Hamilton neighbourhoods offhand. Though there was historically a core/Mountain split.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Docere

Seems like pre-amalgamation Hamilton has rather weak neighbourhood identity. Besides Westdale which is rather separated from the core and home to McMaster University it's hard to think of any Hamilton neighbourhoods offhand. Though there was historically a core/Mountain split.

I'm not sure I'd say this. North End, Kirkendall, Durand, Crown Point, Delta, Westdale, Dundas are all fairly distinctive communities. Dundas was technically it's own municipality, but no different than the former boroughs of Toronto in that way. Maybe outside of Durand, Westdale, and Dundas they are less known outside of Hamilton.. but Hamilton has a pretty low awareness in Canada in general unless you have ties to it.

It's famously frustrating that many national publications list major cities including Halifax and Moncton or Saskatoon, but skip the 9th-largest city in the country. Half of them don't even bother to lump it into the GTA either, and just ignore it entirely.. (for example, CBRE and Colliers publish real estate market reports on markets acros the country covering basically every city over 200,000 people, except for Hamilton). I feel like it's sort of Canada's forgotten city in some ways.

That's off-topic though. My original point was that Toronto has a lot of main streets, but it's not really unique to Toronto - the other major pre-war city in Ontario had it as well but hasn't fared as well economically and therefor tends to be more forgotten. Remember that while the Toronto CMA is about 8.5x the size of Hamilton today, historically they were closer.. in 1951, it was only around 4x the size, and was much healthier economically than it is today at that time as well. Hamilton's lower city was losing population at rates not that much less than many US Rustbelt cities until the mid 2010's as well - Toronto has grown at twice the rate Hamilton has and can better support those pre-war neighbourhoods as a result.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

It's famously frustrating that many national publications list major cities including Halifax and Moncton or Saskatoon, but skip the 9th-largest city in the country. Half of them don't even bother to lump it into the GTA either, and just ignore it entirely.. (for example, CBRE and Colliers publish real estate market reports on markets acros the country covering basically every city over 200,000 people, except for Hamilton). I feel like it's sort of Canada's forgotten city in some ways.

It's the Rodney Dangerfield of Canadian cities.

[WhipperSnapper]

Toronto is lackadaisical, undefined for just about anything. Should neighbourhoods be any different? Realtors for more than a half century have used ambiguous borders and nicknames to sell homes creating analogous subdivisions like out in the 905. Upper Beaches coined from the A-list of celebrity Toronto neighbourhoods, Beaches, which is a nickname they popularized for the original cottage community, The Beach.

As for the question, it's the largest city in the country. I can't see any Maritime town or city being any different if they had followed Toronto's growth trajectory.

[Docere]

More evidence of long-time place-based identity can be found in the names of several Toronto and Montreal federal ridings (e.g. Rosedale, Parkdale and Beaches included in the names of Toronto ridings, Notre Dame de Grace and Hochelaga in Montreal). Of course these are the two largest cities with 18-24 ridings so you can't just have "North, Centre, East" and so on.