Quote:
Originally Posted by Doady
These houses actually probably 20-30 years old now. 50 year old neighbourhoods like Milliken and Mississauga Valleys aren't so great either. Just looking at residential streets, I think newer neighbourhoods like Cornell and Uptown Core do look better.
|
Milliken is more like 40 years old though. This aerial was taken in 1983 and shows construction wrapping up in the street you linked on streetview.
I would say that 1970s-1980s represent an important transition period for Toronto suburbia. During this period, female workforce participation rates increased dramatically, which meant most households required at least two cars.
You also saw Toronto starting to run into some growth limits.
During the 40s-50s the widespread adoption of the automobile greatly increased the amount of land that was accessible to commuters, faster than the population could grow, resulting in rather low density development. However, by the 70s-80s, most of that newly accessible land had been built up and construction of new highways slowed, so you once again had development pressure to reduce lot sizes to build more houses on the smaller amount of remaining land within a reasonable commuting distance. Related to this, you also began to see much more suburban office parks being built.
Average house sizes for new ground oriented dwellings have also been increasing steadily since WWII.
Due to trying to fit bigger homes with garages that can fit more cars on smaller lots, development pressures created a transition from single storey homes being the norm in the 60s to 2 storey homes being the norm in the 80s. And because the lots had to be quite narrow and accommodate 2 car garages, this often took the form of a snout house, whereas in the 50-60s something like this would have been more typical.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7252...7i16384!8i8192