> H O M E

C’était il y a 2 semaines déj– wait a second. What’s up with me and posting about stuff two weeks after the fact? Anyway, two weeks ago we were in Toronto, and it has taken that much time for me to digest the experience and dispense some no doubt much anticipated insights and bits of wisdom on the Mistake by the Lake.

Now, I see you going “whoa là gros, ain’t that Cleveland?” — I know, that’s what I said (en bon québécois, too) to this incredulous and clearly under appreciative 120% Montrealer friend of mine. “Same difference, man. You’ll be sorry.” Well, that only made me more intrigued and eager to see the place. After all I’m the yahoo who keeps raving about KCMO and was disappointed to be going to Las Vegas instead of Pittsburgh. So we loaded up the Elantra, fired up some Heart and off to Hogtown we were.

Driving into Toronto coming from the East is an interesting experience no matter which way you go. Staying on the 401 through North York affords close-up views of some of the tackiest faux-whatever condo development in Canada (”one might mistake it for the most compelling features of the New York skyline” — one may have to go and get one’s vision checked. And this is far from the worst example); an experience somewhat reminiscent of driving down the GA400 into Buckhead and Atlanta, minus the lush Georgia landscape (and the inexplicable 50-cent toll).

If you don’t feel like navigating the 12 to 20 lanes of the busiest highway in North America, another option is to take the Don Valley Parkway and keep going onto the Gardiner Expressway. Cutting right through downtown on an elevated expressway amid a dense pack of green and blue glass condo towers has a distinctively Asian/Pacific rim feel to it — not quite crazy enough to look Chinese or even SE Asian, although it did for a fleeting second feel a little Hong Kongish, but possibly a larger, taller (and colder) version of the Australian Gold Coast. Or Vancouver on steroids maybe.

But exit the freeway just east of downtown, into Corktown/Old Toronto, and all of a sudden you’re in a gentrified midwestern inner city a la Kansas City or Omaha, only 5 to 10 years ahead of those (maybe not that obvious in the picture, but I’ll let the crime rate speak for itself).

A mere 3 minutes later, we’re downtown. Although it’s often described as the “New York of Canada”, the narrow streets and the palette of older architecture decidedly reminded me more of San Francisco, sans hills. Plus, the ubiquitous historic single-ended streetcars are a nice middle ground between SF’s emblematic cable cars and its slightly more modern fleet of Muni light rail vehicles. And of course I suspect the Queen City is closer to the City by the Bay in terms of global financial importance. To round up the California metaphor, I’ll say that the few but striking post-modern elements and the general middle-to-low rise area directly north of Downtown are in turn reminiscent of SF and parts of LA — especially some corner shopping plazas with a small parking lot in the front, of which I found a few examples north and east of Midtown, to say nothing of the multipolar nature of the sprawling urban area.

I could go on about some of the most striking ethnic neighbourhoods, but I guess what I’m getting at is, while it’s usually futile and almost impossible to sum up and neatly categorize the complexity of all that makes a city, a city, I was really struck by Toronto’s multiple facets. Still, if I had to keep just one overwhelming impression, it would be that of an ongoing fight between sprawl and densification. The city is at the same time expanding ever further north, east and west (thank goodness for the lake to the south) and intensifying the existing density havens of Downtown, Midtown, North York and the likes, in a strongly transit-oriented fashion.

And this is precisely why I liked Toronto so much — it is essentially a reflection of my own ambiguous stance. Sure, I am routinely denouncing auto-centric sprawl as the irresponsible, self-defeating delusion it is known to be — we’re yearning and reaching (way) out for the promise of a rural lifestyle, to escape the oppression of a dense urban environment, while at the same time turning these formerly rural areas into more of the same auto-centric, big-box dominated suburban and, increasingly, exurban wasteland.
But while I know all of this, and firmly believe this is hurting the very urban environment I appreciate so much, I have to admit I hold a deeply rooted fascination for sprawl and its associated symbolism of power and freedom. Like I said in an earlier post, this probably has something to do with my love of populuxe architecture and the Los Angeles area. And, frankly, who does sprawl better than Southern California? Amid the tangle of freeways lies one of the densest metropolitan areas of the continent, precursor of the suburban revolution 50 years ago, and still leading the way in the post-suburban revolution that is only starting now. I can only hope the GTA is looking hard at SoCal when trying to define and implement strategies to make itself more sustainable, but a lot of what I saw during these 4 days was very encouraging.

This is why any place that makes suburbia even slightly more defendable scores big points with me. If, like Toronto, it combines that with a rich, vibrant downtown, and a myriad of cool, diverse neighborhoods, I can’t help but fall in love.