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Originally Posted by someone123
I think it's easy to dismiss each individual thing as being minor or something (else) somebody might not notice but they can and do add up to large differences. I find Seattle and Portland to be very different from Vancouver even though "on paper" they should be similar (similar size, same region). The highways and transit alone create a big difference in how each city functions.
People tend to focus on the nicer stuff but there are a lot of unique mundane aspects too, one Vancouver example being Vancouver Specials and all those packed in houses in East Van that are fairly distinctive even though I would not call them beautiful. In 1910 I would guess that Vancouver was building more similar houses to Seattle than in 1980, i.e. there was less distinctiveness in early industrial housing (Craftsmen houses and many styles that were basically made from kits, even brick apartment buildings) than in some modern era stuff.
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That's a good assessment, I think. In Western Canada, aside from, say, the Chateauesque railroad hotels, the architectural styles often mimicked that of the US. In the East, it seems more mixed. Halifax and Saint John have older areas that could be New England, and Windsor's old areas look like Detroit if it hadn't emptied out. But Quebec's triplex typology and the often British-y rowhouse/duplex neighbourhoods in Southern Ontario (think the Bay and Gable areas) are a bit different from what immediately follows across the border. The architectural vernacular of a Rochester or Buffalo does not look like Hamilton or Toronto, though maybe it looks a bit like the Niagara Region.
The Canadian coasts are the areas that most resemble what immediately follows across the border. Maine I've heard described by a handful of people as being "like Nova Scotia" and states like WA and OR are not entirely dissimilar from BC. That being said, Vancouver does not look like an American city, even though it often plays one on the big screen. Seattle and Portland have styles and aesthetics that just don't fit in up north. There's arguably more 'Vancouverism' in Toronto than Seattle, the transit ridership (especially in Portland) is not on the same level, there are vast freeway networks slicing through the metro area, the sprawl in Seattle is much more apparent, there's the big void-like downtown convention centres that every American downtown seems to have but not Canada, there's less Asian influence (though it's still strong in Seattle), the metro areas of Portland and Seattle don't feel as compacted like Metro Vancouver (even though I think Metro Portland and Metro Vancouver aren't totally dissimilar in geographic area), and so on. And yet, there's a lot of cross-traffic between the 3 cities and so there's a lot of sharing of ideas that comes with that. Vancouver seems as much a destination for Seattlelites as Seattle is for Vancouverites, usually the relationship with Canada is more one-sided. There's also a shared outdoorsy culture.
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Another subtle difference that I think affects a lot of things is how Canadian urban construction (both buildings and infrastructure) seems more likely to be aimed at average or middle class people. The US has more gold-plated grand construction and then areas that are falling apart, while Canada has more modest condos or "cheap and cheerful" looking developments. American developments often look scaled up by about 20%. Often the Canadian scaling is more like say London than Chicago.
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I don't disagree with you here, but it is worth noting that those cheap-looking developments are often anything but. It's honestly ridiculous how much cheap crap will go for in Canadian cities.
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Yet another comment I will make is that there aren't really that many cities so it's not that hard for them to be relatively unique. Many regions of North America have only a handful of major cities. There are arguably around half a dozen Toronto-sized cities in North America in total.
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I count 8 that are +/- 1 million from Toronto's size (so 5-7 million)
1. Toronto
2. Dallas
3. Houston
4. Philadelphia
5. San Francisco
6. Miami
7. Atlanta
8. Guadalajara
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