The main problem with suburbs until recently is they did not build new corridors. They just built around the existing concession roads. This results in huge gaps between parallel corridors, not only requiring higher capacities for those corridors, and also increasing the walking distances to transit and limiting the densities of those neighbourhoods.
You can see this problem especially in North York and York Region in general. North York City Centre is basically one corridor, Yonge Street, because there are few corridors in North York.
You can also see this problem around Port Credit in Mississauga. There is not one single local east-west corridor crossing the Credit River north of Lakeshore Road and south of Dundas Street. Not even one. There is also no proper north-south corridor between Hurontario Street and Southdown Road/Erin Mills Parkway. These lack of corridors is what prevents from Port Credit from ever becoming a true downtown or transit hub, and prevents South Mississauga from ever urbanizing on a large scale.
The key ingredient to building a walkable environment is having corridors closer together, so they do not need to be as high capacity for support higher density development, and so that the walking distances are smaller, especially to transit.
Look at York Region Transit: south of Rutherford Road and 16th Avenue, there only one continuous single east-west transit route, which is Highway 7. There is no other continuous YRT east-west route, not even one. That is not the recipe for getting people out of their cars and reducing the width of road.
Permeability, that is the key to urbanity. Lots of corridors, closer together.
Downtown Toronto has three north-south corridors, Spadina, University, Yonge, but North York City Centre only has one, Yonge. That is the big difference between them, the permeability. Mississauga City Centre has two corridors, Confederation Parkway and Hurontario Street, while Scarborough City Centre has Brimley and McCowan Road. Will two be enough? I don't know but somehow I doubt it.
You can see in Scarborough, they are able to minimize the width of all those north-south roads, because they are close together, there are so many of them! But, unfortunately, all of those corridors were designed to be secondary, so they are mostly residential. The retail and transit is mostly along the east-west corridors. But still, Scarborough a good foundation to work with for the future.
Mississauga tried to build similar foundation with Confederation Parkway, but it has a similar problem of not being a major transit corridor. There is no north-south corridor on the east side of Hurontario to help take some of the pressure off, so even after there is LRT the Hurontario corridor must still maintain high capacity for cars. So overall, Scarborough is in much better position than Mississauga for the future.
You can see a newer suburb like Brampton learning from the mistakes of older suburbs, and also from its own past mistakes, building entirely new corridors Williams Parkway and Sandalwood Parkway, to close the gap between Queen Street and Bovaird Road, and Countryside Drive and Bovaird Road. Compare this to the gap between Steeles Ave and Queen Street, which will never be filled.
These gaps are the number one thing what separates inner cities from the suburbs, and these gaps were created by a strict hierarchy of roads and streets. In essence, suburbanization is defined primarily by a lack of permeability resulting from a strict hierarchy of roads and streets, including the distinction between "roads" and "streets". In the suburb, streets are clearly different from road, but in the inner city, every street is a road, and every road is a street. The city has more roads, but there are also more streets. You prefer streets? Then you need to build more roads, not less. You need to stop the separation of road and streets that started in the post-war era. You need to celebrate "stroads" instead of condemn them.
That is what this thread gets wrong entirely. Yonge Street, Queen Street, Bloor Street, King Street, College Street, Church Street, these are the "stroads". Wonderland Road North in London? That is just a road, it is not a street at all, it is not at all a "stroad", and that is the whole problem with it. Why can Wonderland Road North only be a road, and not also a street in some way? Why can't it be a "stroad"? Because it is the only corridor between Hyde Park Road and Richmond Street. Wonderland Road North has to close a 6km gap all by itself.
That is the entire problem with the suburbs: the lack of throughfares, the lack of roads, which prevents the roads from ever becoming streets. Every road should become a street, and we can never do that unless we start building more and more roads in the suburbs.
Again look at Mississauga south of Dundas Street, probably the worst suburbanization in all of Canada. A very strict distinction between road and street. Very, very few roads. Very few transit corridors, very few opportunities for higher density, very few opportunities to transform roads into "stroads". It's a pure suburban disaster than can never be fixed. You really want this garbage for your city? Really? Think about that.
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