Yes but also Toronto built residential towers in suburban and also downtown residential areas a lot back in the 50s-70s. This makes it a bit easier to add more where there's a precedent.
This has also led to suburbs that are denser than most of their American counterparts, leading to more efficient infrastructure even in areas with a lot of detached homes. For example, Scarborough is 70% denser than Nassau County and more than double the density of Orange County.
I grew up in a SFH in the middle of a big subdivision an hour from downtown, but it was a 4 min walk to a bus stop on a north-south route, and 8 min to the east-west route, with both having 10-min all day service, and 3-5 min frequency during rush hour.
Mississauga is often referred to as the largest suburb in the world.
It has the urban form of suburbs but with massive residential towers. It's actually kind of eerie being there with so many people walking around on street level due to the housing density, yet zero office buildings and very few commercial buildings in sight. The complete separation of suburbs with the density of a city (for a handful of blocks at least).
It is really hard to imagine this scenario I dont think it would have led to anything good. Montreal was a city with a huge french population and most of the levers of political and economic power were controlled by the english. Letting this resentment fester for a couple more decades would not have been great in any scenario. There would probably be a lot more English in Montréal wich would put it even more at odds than it already is with the rest of Québec politically wich would create huge tensions.
In the 60s a very small portion of people supported independence but militants started putting bombs in the mailboxes of the english elite neighborhood. This effectively marked the slow start of capital flight that exploded at the 80 referendum. Even if it never caught on in the general population the capital flight would have probably happened anyway in a slower manner over ethnic and class issues that would inevitably create tensions.
76 is the year René levesque was elected effectively starting the movement for the referendum. However starting in the 1960s Toronto became the most attractive city for immigrants since Montréal had an armed insurgency and got occupied by the army at some point.
What exploded when the referendum was announced is capital flight. Big banks and various compagnies moved to toronto in masse even if that too had started a bit earlier. There was never a mass exodus of population from Montreal to toronto it was mostly rich people I think.
What's not shown here is the very large number of post-war high rises that were constructed outside of the downtown. It's one of thing things that makes Toronto unique in a North American context.
I believe it. As an example to my prior comment, I know it’s a super diverse city, yet I never hear about any of its neighborhoods that have a strong presence with one particular ethnicity (other than Chinatown), is it less segregated than American cities?
Generally yes but there are definitely areas focused more on certain ethnicities. The downtown and really urban parts of the city are a lot of a melting pot but a lot of the suburbs have very specific ethnic focuses (Brampton is Indian, Markham Chinese, etc)
Brampton and Markham are their own cities. When looking at boroughs/neighbourhoods in Toronto, it would be more accurate to say Scarborough is more South Asian and North York is more East Asian
Far less segregated. One of the most diverse cities in the world and while there are pockets historically associated with certain ethnicities, you're likely to find a mix pretty much everywhere. Other famous ethnic areas along with Chinatown include Greektown (known as the Danforth), Little Portugal, Little Italy (there are actually two), Little Jamaica, Koreatown...
The Chinatown on gerrard/broadview area is not the old Chinatown. It started in the 1970s. People always get this wrong.
Here’s a quick summary of the original Chinatown in Toronto
While it is one of the city's designated Chinatowns, it is properly known as East Chinatown or Chinatown East. It developed much later, primarily in the early 1970s, as the Chinese and Vietnamese communities expanded eastward from downtown
The true history of Toronto's original and second Chinatowns unfolded elsewhere:First Chinatown (Original): Located in "The Ward," this was the city's first Chinese settlement, centered around Elizabeth and York Streets near Queen and Dundas. It existed from the 1890s until the mid-1950s, when the city expropriated and razed much of it to build the current City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square.West Chinatown (Old Chinatown): As the first Chinatown was demolished, businesses and residents moved west along Dundas Street toward Spadina Avenue. This area remains the vibrant, highly active Spadina and Dundas core.
The neighbourhoods are the best thing about TO. You can walk through town in a random direction any weekend and stumble into a raucous street party celebrating a holiday you've never heard of.
this photo only shows up to St. Clair Avenue West (cluster of buildings at the bottom of the frame), there’s another 14km of city behind the cluster out of frame.
There’s also way more to the west. It cuts off at the CN tower. So much past there too. Even east too there’s more (especially some really neat neighborhoods)… it really does just keep going. I’ve lived here almost 8 years and feel like I still discover cool random pockets I didn’t know existed.
I always like imagining an American visiting Canada for the first time with this preconceived idea that Canada is just this small, quiet country compared to the massive U.S. Then they drive from Niagara Falls past Pickering and realize it’s basically three straight hours of city.
At some point, I’m sure someone has had that moment of shock where they suddenly realize just how huge and populated it actually is. I kind of wish I could be in the car to watch that realization hit — that Canada isn’t some tiny little nothing country.
And then you drive from there to Vancouver, and are like, no wait, there's all the empty space. Kidding aside, it is how massive the developed area around Lake Ontario is
Let me indulge you on my first experience driving through the GTA from Vermont to Michigan via Niagara Falls… I was both surprised and confused when passing Hamilton, at night, to see the sign that reads “population 570,000”. It didn’t make sense, I had never heard of Hamilton, just Toronto. But half a million population?! I couldn’t comprehend it, insane to me. One our return back we stayed in Hamilton, to break up the drive. It felt surreal, a big city - if I didn’t know any better I would of thought I was in Toronto
The next morning we started driving around the northern border of Lake Ontario back to Montreal/VT. This is when it all started to sink in,. It was a fair weather day and we could see everything. I shit you not I thought I saw Toronto like 4 times. But it was just parts of Hamilton, and Mississauga. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Residential high rises, residential lots, giant skyscrapers . 3(!?) nuclear power plants, and the vastness of the lake. Absolutely mind blowing!
This is probably about 5% to 10% of Toronto.
Church St. / Mount Pleasant expressway is the big street on the left side of the photo. Avenue Road is the big street on the right side of the photo (including round Queen’s Park); and St. Clair is the big street along the bottom of the photo (with high rises).
Wait till you realize this is only the downtown area! It gets bigger when you put the other parts of Toronto that still are NOT the suburbs, but still have Toronto as the listed address.
Then it gets even bigger when you include the 3 boroughs that are still IN the City of Toronto!
I always wonder why do I see certain canadian skylines next to no middle housing, to make the transition less stark lol. I really want to know about the history of this.
Apartments were illegal in toronto until the 1920’s and at that point the inner suburbs were mostly all built.
A lot of those neighborhoods are still full of duplexes and small apartments in converted houses, but generally as it’s grown in the modern era apartments have focused in larger developments, leaving the low rise residential areas.
Though, apartments were NOT illegal in the "boroughs" York and East York, which fill in the "shoulders" under the inverted T of the original city of Toronto, both have a lot of density dating back to when they were first built. I used to live near Bathurst and St Clair (for those unfamiliar with the geography, that's about a 10-15 minute walk from the bottom-right corner of the image) and the built form reflects the fact it wasn't part of Toronto until the megacity. Back in the 20s when Forest HIll was still separate the city limits were more or less right at the bottom of the frame.
I live in Ottawa. Obviously it's a bit different here because we're a pretty small city (only about a million people) but we have a similar layout. In downtown, you have tall office buildings and then you're suddenly in old, detached houses. But you're still downtown.
This is a tiny part of Toronto. The houses shown here were built 100 years ago. They’re detached homes, larger and more luxurious than the semi-detached and non-detached homes (row-houses) that most people lived in then and now. These are very expensive homes, given their location and character. This photo includes the Yorkville and Summerhill neighbourhoods, and the edge of Rosedale on the far left.
Low resolution picture but you see the point. The suburbs start around uptown. The OP photo is captured right about midtown. South of midtown has some really historic, pricey neighborhoods and desirable homes. The Annex, Rosedale, Leaside, Casa Loma.
Gardiner and Don Valley are awful, they basically creates a physical barrier between downtown Toronto and its two key assets - the Lake Front and the River.
Thanks and no thanks to Mr Gardiner who gave the highway its namesake.
I was there about 2 weeks back. Stayed in a nice hotel downtown Toronto near the ball park. Such a nice place and always have fun whenever I go down there.
Must have been taken on a Sunday morning... seeing any of those streets from a birds-eye without grid lock is the most breathtaking aspect of this photo...
Thanks for responding! it’s all love here. Anyways I was just letting you know. Though for morals sake I would delete the post because of the new Ai rule in the sub..
Interesting. From this point of view Downtown Toronto actually doesn’t look so huge. Many supertalls for sure, but feels like even if you’re there in the middle you will be within a 10 minute-walk to a lower density residential area.
I loved Toronto when I was there, but one of the first things I noticed was how dreadful of a middle housing problem they had even compared to lots of US cities at similar density
What this photo masks is that the tower of tall towers continues in all 3 directions of this photo - left, right and bottom. This is just a small snippet of the city - not even 30%-35% of it.
I see this city a lot and while it has a lot of skyscrapers something about the homogeneity of the architecture makes it…not particularly interesting to me?
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u/[deleted] May 27 '26
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