Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
When it comes to low density neighbourhoods, I sense lots of Canadians have become resentful, angry, and vindictive. They just want to bulldoze all of it. For some, if they can't have it, no one can. Low density neighbourhoods are absolutely a less efficient use of land but destroying them would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. We can absolutely have the best of both worlds: medium/high density TOD but also (unlike many European cities) a bucolic break from it every 2-3 km.
The juxtaposition of high density with low density is a wonderful thing, a breath of fresh air, and a blessing. Hopefully, Canadians wake up to that before they destroy what they have. I'm not hopeful though. Canadians are famously self-deprecating and often blind to what they have.
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In theory, I agree - a great city should have a variety of urban typologies and housing types to cater to all types of people and lifestyles. As much as I enjoy a dense city centre or vibrant high street, I also love the respite of being able to turn onto a quiet, leafy residential street. As I've gotten older, that's also become a much more appealing lifestyle.
The problem we have though is that those quiet, leafy residential streets have become exclusive and unattainable to all but a privileged few. The "yellow belt" in Toronto or Vancouver house a shrinking & increasingly wealthy minority of their citizens while occupying the vast majority of land area. Meanwhile, the growing majority (and vast majority of younger or newer residents) are crammed into increasingly small apartments in denser and more crowded clusters.
It's no longer a case of "choice" so much as it has become economic segregation in built form and a visible symbol of our growing inequality.
Anyway, you're right that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater and demolish attractive lower-density neighbourhoods for more anodyne condo towers; but we absolutely do need to permit more gentle intensification (low/mid-rise apartments, laneway houses & garden suites) within in them to make them attainable for more than just the "landed gentry".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Repthe250
I know a lot of people will disagree because there’s just a lot of east coasters who disagree anytime Vancouver is brought up but I would say the West End. It’s the densest neighbourhood in Canada. Probably the most aesthetically pleasing, with a wide array of architecture styles (Sylvia Hotel >> the Butterfly), home to the countries largest urban park, Stanley Park, and one of the best urban beaches in the Country, English Bay.
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"Neighbourhood" is a pretty nebulous concept and certainly open for debate - eg. Yaletown is likely even denser than the West End, but it's not an officially defined neighbourhood by the City.
The City of Toronto meanwhile has much smaller
defined neighbourhoods, so unsurprisingly several of them exceed the West End's density of 23,000/sqkm, like North St. James Town at 44,321/sqkm, Church-Wellesley at 32,684/sqkm, North Toronto at 27,778/sqkm. The most densely populated "official" neighbourhood in Canada might just be in North York though: the Yonge-Doris neighbourhood has a density of 45,824/sqkm. It only has about half the population of the West End though.