Urban? Suburban?

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

What are US equivalents of Forest Hill or Westmount?

Parts of Arlington, VA and Bethesda, MD

The DMV area in general I think has development patterns and urban characteristics not unlike Toronto, skyscrapers and gridded suburbs being the obvious major differences. Both are centralized post-war metros with sizable pre-war cores (CBD and neighborhood), post-war rapid transit systems, hard city proper boundaries that incorporate a good amount of the hybrid form, and sprawly suburbs not really oriented around commuter railroads.

DC suburbs are a mess, very reminiscent of Atlanta with the random street layouts and forested topography.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

I think you're referring to railroad suburbs, not streetcar suburbs. Canadian cities (not just Toronto, but Montreal too) just weren't that big a century ago, so you have no equivalent.

The closest you'll get for that type of feel in Toronto is Port Credit or Oakville, but even they're more postwar suburbia with a little historic village.

Much of Greater LA's bones were built around the Pacific Electric Railway, which was a giant interurban streetcar network that included exclusive ROWs like you would find running through railroad suburbs as well as dedicated ROWs that were neither grade-separated nor mixed-flow. Highland Park was once considered suburban, and is analogous to the Toronto examples you've shared, only the latter have more of an urban form and are better integrated into the larger urban fabric.

South Pasadena is a traditional streetcar suburb based on the definition I've been using. Even though it's served by light rail, the rail line runs along a mostly exclusive ROW and not in the middle of a corridor sharing a surface with automobile traffic. Then there's Claremont, also originally built around the PE, but it's served by traditional commuter rail because it's a stop along a line that extends beyond LA County (Claremont will eventually have light rail as well).

Everything from Ventura to Santa Monica to Beverly Hills to Pasadena to San Bernardino to Riverside to Long Beach to Anaheim to Huntington Beach to San Clemente started out as suburbs that over time became satellite cities, large suburbs, "technically suburbs but not really," suburban-form areas that were absorbed by LA city, and suburbs that remained such in both form and function. LA's complicated.

LIRR and even the NYC Subway started out as trolleys/streetcars, so it's all semantics. South Pasadena is a streetcar suburb that's more like an older East Coast bedroom community than an older neighborhood in Toronto city proper one square block removed from Old Toronto.

[Docere]

Population by city, Los Angeles County, 1910-1950:

http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po26.php

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Most suburbia, whether American or Canadian, doesn't follow a hybrid model as far as built environment is concerned. Or perhaps it's more that the definition of what makes an area suburban-urban differs greatly between the two countries.

In the American context, it's usually referring to outer-ring inner-city enclaves and inner-ring suburbs that are more or less an extension of the former, typically with a rail station (or at the very least an imprint of a historic ROW).

Canadian cities don't really have streetcar suburbs. Instead, they have more multi-family housing and greater transit share (i.e. bus) — things that are urban characteristics on paper.

Those differences aside, do Torontonians view Mississauga, Brampton, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, and Markham as "the suburbs"? Or is it more like LA where there's less of a cultural distinction between city proper and suburb? I ask because Toronto's municipal boundaries are quite sharply defined and not as arbitrary as even NYC and Chicago. The northern boundary, where there is some bleed in development patterns, is one straight line following one equally straight thoroughfare (Steeles Avenue).

here is an entire video by Not Just Bikes on Riverdale, one of Toronto's suburbs

• Video Link

Other Toronto streetcar suburbs are:

West Hill
Cliffside
Birch Cliff
Riverdale (see video)
The Beaches
North Toronto
Parkdale
New Toronto
Mimico
Long Branch

Montreal streetcar suburbs

Lachine
St Laurent
Cartierville
Sault-au-Récollet
Westmount
Outremont
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

Ottawa Streetcar Suburbs

Hintonburg
Westboro
Glebe
Old Ottawa South
Old Ottawa East
Rockcliffe Park

Vancouver Streetcar Suburbs

Kitsilano
Mount Pleasant
Fairview
Grandview-Woodland
Dunbar-Southlands
Kerrisdale

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Quixote

I'd consider that an urban neighborhood built during the early days of the automobile era that was eventually absorbed into the city proper. Even if not originally Toronto proper, it has more the urban form of an outer-ring inner-city enclave than a close-in suburb with a walkable downtown and commuter rail station. I'm thinking something more along the lines of a Weston, only outside city limits.

Streetcar suburbs refer to extensions of the existing city built prior to the age of automobiles. They don't tend to have a downtown and commuter rail station. Before cars, cities generally couldn't expand geographically beyond the walking range of a typical person because there just wasn't the transportation options to allow it. Horse-based transportation just wasn't as practical so suburbs based on that weren't very large. But the introduction of electric streetcars greatly expanded the geographic potential of cities making for urban nabes that were less dense and more "suburban" than the original city. But they really weren't in any way suburban relative to our current concepts of it which are based on automobile sprawl. Today, streetcar nabes are often considered urban and inner city. Nabes built around interurban lines were likely closer to railroad suburbs but I'm sure some hybrids exist.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Most suburbia, whether American or Canadian, doesn't follow a hybrid model as far as built environment is concerned. Or perhaps it's more that the definition of what makes an area suburban-urban differs greatly between the two countries.

In the American context, it's usually referring to outer-ring inner-city enclaves and inner-ring suburbs that are more or less an extension of the former, typically with a rail station (or at the very least an imprint of a historic ROW).

Canadian cities don't really have streetcar suburbs. Instead, they have more multi-family housing and greater transit share (i.e. bus) — things that are urban characteristics on paper.

Those differences aside, do Torontonians view Mississauga, Brampton, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, and Markham as "the suburbs"? Or is it more like LA where there's less of a cultural distinction between city proper and suburb? I ask because Toronto's municipal boundaries are quite sharply defined and not as arbitrary as even NYC and Chicago. The northern boundary, where there is some bleed in development patterns, is one straight line following one equally straight thoroughfare (Steeles Avenue).

As Docere says, there is 416 and 905, but I'm not sure it is that much a cultural. Steeles is quite arbitrary. It's more the 416 and the 905 rather than the 416 vs. the 905. Each municipality is big in its own right, Mississauga and Brampton bigger than most US and Canadian cities, so they each have an identity of sorts. So people probably think more individual municipalities instead of collectively.

As I said, suburbs are ultimately an extension and product of the city. Suburbanites are still living in apartments and townhouses and crowding the buses. Some might call it "dystopia" but that affects Toronto too. Look these "inner ring" neighbourhoods highlighted by the OP, what would happen to them if the adjacent neighbourhoods were completely car-dependent? How many parking lots would be needed? That is not what I would call utopia.

Btw, the Not Just Bikes guy makes a lot of sensationalist and misleading claims about Toronto and its suburbs. He once made a video presenting suburban transit in the GTA as nothing more than a bunch of parking lots and a few rush hour only GO Trains to and from downtown, which is obviously bullshit, even if you exclude Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough. I wouldn't take anything he says too seriously.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Streetcar suburbs refer to extensions of the existing city built prior to the age of automobiles. They don't tend to have a downtown and commuter rail station. Before cars, cities generally couldn't expand geographically beyond the walking range of a typical person because there just wasn't the transportation options to allow it. Horse-based transportation just wasn't as practical so suburbs based on that weren't very large. But the introduction of electric streetcars greatly expanded the geographic potential of cities making for urban nabes that were less dense and more "suburban" than the original city. But they really weren't in any way suburban relative to our current concepts of it which are based on automobile sprawl. Today, streetcar nabes are often considered urban and inner city. Nabes built around interurban lines were likely closer to railroad suburbs but I'm sure some hybrids exist.

It may be Wikipedia, but thanks. Yeah, there's definitely a distinction between streetcar suburbs and commuter rail bedroom communities.

One thing I'm still not sure I agree with is that streetcar suburbs thoroughly pre-date the automobile era, which begins as early as the turn of the century. LA neighborhoods like Highland Park and Angelino Heights all feature wider-than-desirable streets and front-facing driveways. I also didn't realize that mews/mid-block alleys were for originally for horse-drawn carriages, rather than the much-tinier automobiles back in the day. So that must mean the homes with driveways were originally front yards.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Streetcar suburbs refer to extensions of the existing city built prior to the age of automobiles. They don't tend to have a downtown and commuter rail station. Before cars, cities generally couldn't expand geographically beyond the walking range of a typical person because there just wasn't the transportation options to allow it. Horse-based transportation just wasn't as practical so suburbs based on that weren't very large. But the introduction of electric streetcars greatly expanded the geographic potential of cities making for urban nabes that were less dense and more "suburban" than the original city. But they really weren't in any way suburban relative to our current concepts of it which are based on automobile sprawl. Today, streetcar nabes are often considered urban and inner city. Nabes built around interurban lines were likely closer to railroad suburbs but I'm sure some hybrids exist.

I actually think that streetcar suburbs are a fundamentally suburban typology, while railroad suburbs are a fundamentally urban typology.

Railroad suburbs were decades older, dating to the mid 19th century. While they typically didn't have heavy industry, they were otherwise built on the model of a miniature city, with a downtown commercial area by the railroad station. In addition, they were constructed prior to the idea that social classes should be residentially segregated, meaning even in quite wealthy ones there was always a poorer side of town for "the help" to live in (along with people like shopkeepers, etc.) The main method you engaged with community was on foot, you just commuted into the city via rail.

In contrast, a streetcar suburb (which began being a thing in the last decade of the 19th century) was explicitly set up with segregation of classes and uses in mind. Developers would plot out the whole neighborhood at once, and favored very long linear blocks (which weren't best from a pedestrian perspective) because it meant more salable lots. Not only were all industrial uses segregated out, but often commercial districts were very small and widely spaced as well, because the original setup of the streetcar was they would stop on every corner quite frequently, allowing travel to a more distant commercial node for shopping. Mixes of housing typologies became rarer (more SFH-dominant) and generally speaking mixing of income levels was not part of the original design (though if they went more upscale/downscale, the housing size/quality could change over time.

[Doady]

The purpose of long narrow blocks of streetcar suburbs were to make it easier to walk to the streetcar stop, minimizing barriers and walking distances for pedestrians. They were still built for pedestrians. This is in contrast to car-oriented suburbs which are not designed to offer pedestrians straight path to the bus stop.

The car-oriented suburb has a strict hierarchy of roads from freeways, major arterials, minor arterials, major collectors, minor collectors, local roads or side streets. In a streetcar suburb, there is only the main street and the side streets. The streetcar suburb also has a much higher density of intersections compared to the car-oriented suburb. It is not "fundamentally suburban" by today's standards.

It's not the 19th century anymore. To idealize a "miniature city" is not urban anymore, it might even be anti-urban. Urban areas are millions of people now. The streetcar suburb, designed for the big city, is the most urban now. You want to build a transit-oriented neighbourhood, you focus on the corridors, not the train station. An isolated neighbourhood with a train station is not going to work anymore.

[Docere]

Don Mills, which began development in 1953, was blueprint for what came later in the GTA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Mills

[Docere]

[double post]

[Docere]

Southern Etobicoke is a mix of interwar and postwar suburbs.

Three lakefront communities - Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch - were incorporated as municipalities in the early 20th century (and amalgamated into the borough of Etobicoke in 1967):

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6125...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6175...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6014...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5988...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5953...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5949...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5965...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5956...7i16384!8i8192

[Docere]

Softee did another tour of Bathurst St./Lawrence Manor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9NVn4BLb8E

My guess is most would put Forest Hill, Vaughan Road and Mount Dennis-Weston under "urban" and Etobicoke lakeshore and Lawrence Manor as "suburban."

Not sure if there's any other Toronto neighborhoods worth profiling.

I'll do Vancouver next.

[Quixote]

Do Torontonians generally like the more unkempt aesthetic of the city (i.e. power lines, less manicured softscapes)? Or is there this idea that in order to fully "seize the mantle" away from Montreal, polishing up the cityscape is a must?

Toronto's quirks and shabbiness are what make it interesting. It provides a nice and much-needed juxtaposition against all the look-alike residential towers going up.

I also don't get why Montreal's urbanism is viewed so much more favorably than Toronto's. Montreal's pre-war residential architecture looks very utilitarian, though the form is more "fine-grained." Toronto's stock, while not wall-to-wall, is more charming IMO. The streets are also narrower, so it appears.

[Docere]

There's no dispute that Toronto is Canada's largest city. It's nearly twice the size of Montreal, richer, more diverse. So I don't think anyone cares about "upping" Montreal.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Nite

here is an entire video by Not Just Bikes on Riverdale, one of Toronto's suburbs

Riverdale was annexed in 1884. If Riverdale is a "suburb", pretty much everything outside the downtown core is.

[Docere]

Remember when AOC said that defunding the police would be like a suburb?

The implication is that suburbia is generally prosperous, which has a lot of truth to it in the US, even though suburbs come in all sorts of forms.

That analogy to Canadians, "suburb" means "average" or "the masses", monotonous etc. Suburbs are for the masses or maybe "new money", not the elites.

People in West Vancouver, say, will go to great pains to say their community is "not suburban" (because it has "character", it's not mass tract suburbia etc.)

I even recall some posters here insist that Port Credit isn't "suburban" because it's "old" and has character.

(There are of course some wealthy suburbs, like Oakville and West Vancouver, but they're considered exceptional).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

Remember when AOC said that defunding the police would be like a suburb?

The implication is that suburbia is generally prosperous

That isn't what she meant. She meant that generic American suburbia chooses to spend money on other community needs besides policing. That said, NYC already spends far more on the school system than it does on the police force, and also spends a bit more on public transit. But I suspect many other cities in the country spend far more on police than they do on transit.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Docere

Riverdale was annexed in 1884. If Riverdale is a "suburb", pretty much everything outside the downtown core is.

Well yes. Most urban neighbourhoods in Canada were lower density expansions of the original settlement. That's how cities tended to grow in the that era. Most parts of the city beyond the original settlement were initially suburbs and as development pushed further and further out, the original suburbs became comparatively central. Today, those prior suburbs aren't considered to be suburbs anymore because they aren't peripheral and because they look very different from modern suburbs due to their age and differences in planning practices.

When people talk about streetcar suburbs, they don't mean that they're currently suburbs. They just mean areas that originated in that way from that era.

[Docere]

Yes streetcar suburbs were suburbs a century ago or more, and they developed between (roughly) 1890 and 1930. Most streetcar suburbs today are functionally urban.