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Originally Posted by speedog
I'm not sure if I agree because I can look north of me into Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills and even Beddington and find very generous sized lots and some of those communities were still being built out in the late 70's and maybe even 80's and all of them are still relatively low in density.
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I don't believe those places were designed in the 80's. 70's yes, but irrespective, my point is still valid. Generally speaking, 60's and 70's inner city is way less dense than current developments, or anything designed certainly by 1990 and on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by speedog
Maybe the definition is more around the average commute time or distance to the core - difficult to peg down.
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I've heard 'some' use this, but I've highlighted that most people in the city don't work in the inner city, so if urban living is 'better' and someone lives in a pseudo-dense area close to where they work, should they get penalized by claims of it being non-urban? The meaning of urban has been too often distorted, and then house of cards arguments created based on this. Urban actually means in the city. Cities are urban by definition:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/urban
So my discussion in the prior post of what Americans call suburban is quite valid. There was an American research paper posted on the forum some time ago that showed how suburban living was more expensive than urban, when accounting for cost of housing as well as commuting. When I investigated in detail, their suburban was 2 hours of commuting one way out from places of work. In fact, the range 0-5km from centre was extremely expensive, and then the band 5-20km out was cheapest, and then increased costs after that. So while the fellow who posted used it to explain how inner city was cheaper than what forumers here call suburban, the reality was revealed with a more thoughtful read of the report. What was claimed suburban by us, was actually urban by the report writers. Seems we have many spin doctors on the forum when it comes to using such studies.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful discussion. Personally, I wish I had a 60' lot, but alas, I'm an environmentalist
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