- cross-posted to:
- fewercars@lemmy.ca
- vancouver@lemmy.ca
- Cyborganism ( @cyborganism@lemmy.ca ) 11•1 year ago
What we really need in Canada is for companies and jobs to spread out across multiple cities in Canada instead of being all concentrated in Toronto.
Then maybe everyone and their grandmother and all immigrants won’t be trying to cram themselves into one small place in a country that has one of the largest areas on earth.
The point of this article is we can and should make room in Toronto. There’s plenty of space if we accommodate with a better built form that isn’t sprawling detached homes.
- rbesfe ( @rbesfe@lemmy.ca ) 5•1 year ago
Toronto easily has space to grow to 4 million residents plus. There are vast swaths of Canada’s largest city that are built like some far-flung suburb, and that needs to change sooner rather than later
- Cyborganism ( @cyborganism@lemmy.ca ) 3•1 year ago
Will you forget about Toronto already???
Toronto isn’t the only place in Canada where people live.
Fuck. It’s no wonder everyone else in Canada hates Torontonians. It’s like you guys think you’re the only ones in the whole goddamn country.
- Victor Villas ( @villasv@lemmy.ca ) 3•1 year ago
It doesn’t make sense to get angry at this. The topic is density, Toronto is one of the densest cities in Canada. Toronto will be a central role on the topic one way or another, like Vancouver naturally will too (and is even mentioned in the article)
- Cyborganism ( @cyborganism@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
I understand.
What I’m trying to say is that increasing density isn’t a good solution.
We need to spread out across Canada. Give people the opportunity to move to other locations. Like in the US. They have so many cities to live in where there’s tons of jobs. Not everyone has to cram in, say, New York for example. People can choose where they want to work and live.
- Victor Villas ( @villasv@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
I see. I sincerely hope that Canada doesn’t meet that expectation of yours, because I too believe that increasing density is cities is essential. Of course so in big cities, but in smaller cities as well, and that too would help creating more economic opportunities in more places.
- corsicanguppy ( @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ) 2•1 year ago
In context, the focus on Toronto as an example makes sense.
Give the guy a pass this time.
- ILikeBoobies ( @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ) 4•1 year ago
That’s on the government to build out cities in remote locations and then have extremely low costs for people/businesses to bring them in
Also needs high speed commercial rail between the cities
- Cyborganism ( @cyborganism@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
We HAVE other cities across Canada already that could be used as other locations for companies. We don’t need to build more.
What the government needs to do is provide incentives for companies to move. But that could mean job losses in Toronto/Ontario. Would they be willing to make that sacrifice? I don’t think so.
I agree with the high speed rail thing though.
- ILikeBoobies ( @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
Ontario needs intermediaries between Toronto/Ottawa and Thunder Bay
The niche is currently occupied by Sudbury and Sault which isn’t ideal
There also isn’t really anything connecting to Hudson Bay/NW Passage (goes for the other provinces)
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ) 1•1 year ago
Calgary is on it.
- masterspace ( @masterspace@lemmy.ca ) English9•1 year ago
Feels like a bit of a disingenuous article when it won’t openly talk about the downsides of density. The downtown core of Toronto got denser and it got completely soulless. It’s tower after tower that block daylight from reaching street level, leaving no sunlight but for those living at the top, and endless stretches of shoebox apartments where you’re lucky if you get a balcony. There’s no independent shops left and all the real estate is owned by massive corporations and banks that are always trying to extract as much money as possible from their tenants.
Their solution of bowling over all single family housing to replace with midrise apartments is also not exactly going to be popular.
I get that we need to density and we need land reform but your proposal is going to have a real hard time gaining traction if it boils down to “let’s tear down everything here that all the existing residents chose and replace it with something else that we think is more logical”.
“let’s tear down everything here that all the existing residents chose and replace it with something else that we think is more logical”.
This feels like a dishonest interpretation that misses a lot of the nuance presented in the article.
- Smk ( @Smk@lemmy.ca ) 12•1 year ago
Density shouldn’t be big tower. It should be 4-5 story building very close together.
- corsicanguppy ( @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
The downtown core of Toronto got denser and it got completely soulless. It’s tower after tower that block daylight from reaching street level, leaving no sunlight but for those living at the top, and endless stretches of shoebox apartments where you’re lucky if you get a balcony.
Sorry kid. You can’t have space AND fit people as well. Since every rooftop needs to be a garden, at least that’s a nice place to hang out.
You can’t solve it by mid-ride or low-boys, either – you need the economies of scale and minimal-density to save on infrastructure; and get better transit that is sufficient on property taxes before the user-pay system and road-tax ideas both die. Because no one’s paying for the absolute shit Translink pulled these last few years. You need the high density to create and maintain the shared greenspace between the clusters, so it doesn’t end up looking like Detroit or Jersey. You need the high densite to get that land BACK, as well as pull people out of the delta where we NEED that land for responsible local farming. (didn’t think of that in your mid-rise plan, did you?)
Sorry. Towers are the reality if you want to live in the cities – just, if we do it right, with greenways of sanity to break up the tower clusters and cool things down… Kitimat’s nice, though.
- Tackywater ( @Tackywater@lemmy.ca ) English2•1 year ago
I always thought that habitat67 was a good example of how to do add density in a way that didn’t feel dense. It’s too bad this never got further than Expo 67.