Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
I’ll concede that. If this wasn’t an urbanism forum, but a “suburbanist” forum, American cities would crush Canadian cities for suburban living standards.
American suburbs in the eastern half of the continent are exurban and sprawly, but from a suburban homeowner perspective, that’s kind of the point: you get a lot of living space, a bigger house, nicer landscaping, trees, and, in many exurban areas, a small, tidy prewar village with a Main Street atmosphere within easy driving distance. You don’t get much of that in the suburbs of major Canadian cities.
Here in the GTA, the western lakeshore suburbs like Port Credit, Oakville and Burlington kind of have that, but at a big price premium and they’re not quite as nice as a north shore Chicago suburb or Connecticut/Westchester county.
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Full disclosure: I am as anti-suburbs as the next guy in this supposedly "urban forum".
Having said that, the main reason that most American suburbs are nicer than Canadian ones, is that the Upper-Middle Class and above in Canada never left the core of the cities in mass, like it happened in the US.
The best and most desirable neighborhoods in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are close to the city centre.
No slavery legacy and "coloured people" (as Americans used to call them) "moving into the cities, driving down property prices, and sending their kids to formerly all white schools and undermining the public education system, perception of increased crime", etc. (those are the words of American urban historians describing the "white flight phenomenon", not mine).
In the case of Toronto, with some exceptions, of course, the 905 'burbs are heavily immigrant, middle-class and below.
It's the opposite in the US - of course those suburbs are going to be nicer. Enjoy!
Me, no thanks.