Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
Ya, Kitchener is very easy to get around with it's great highway system. That however is what makes it a rather uninteresting place and very suburban in nature.
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I think you'll find that the expressways in Waterloo Region have had much less influence than you might think. If you compare the population densities of the Kitchener and London population centres, London is only slightly higher than Kitchener (1653 vs. 1417). Additionally, London's housing growth occurred earlier compared to Waterloo Region, outpacing it significantly in the pre- and post-war eras, and only falling behind since the mid-1990s. It's not surprising that a greater proportion of Waterloo Region housing is going to be suburban if a greater proportion of it was built in recent years. That's not to say that the expressway network hasn't had an influence. It is to say that the suburban nature of Waterloo Region is due to many factors and many of those factors led to suburban style development in Kitchener as well as London and everywhere else regardless of how many expressways there are.
Just a comparison of the population density of other population centres (from the 2011 Census):
Halifax: 1107
Quebec City: 1041
Montreal: 2205
Ottawa: 1860
Kingston: 1260
Toronto: 2931
Kitchener: 1417
London: 1653
Winnipeg: 1493
Calgary: 1555
Edmonton: 1122
Vancouver: 1856
Victoria: 1142
Leading into the second point - expressways and population density (my surrogate statistic for suburban-ness for lack of a better one) have absolutely no correlation to how interesting a city is as shown above. I would argue that the unusually high polycentricity of Waterloo Region is probably singularly the most important factor in its perceived lack of vibrancy.
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It is a good one.
umm, the 99 is actually incredibly level, there are literally no dips or bumps south of the tunnel.
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