What Toronto Looks Like Now (Winter 2014)

Toronto is what most people who know anything of it would expect it to be, a rather large city that sprawls horizontally beyond the typical vertical business district downtown.  There are large buildings, a public transportation system covering most of the high traffic areas, and a general environment of connection with the rest of the world.  In comparison to New York, Toronto is much more spread out and less dense, but in comparison with Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, or Montreal, the scale of the city does not necessarily shrink in relation to distance from the economic core.  There are skyscrapers of considerable height all over the place, often dwarfing the neighborhoods around them or consumed by them.

Example provided farther below in image with lots of taller trees.

Despite being a relatively young city (200 years plus to foundation), at least in terms of it's current level of importance (50 years or so), Toronto has not developed into a clean grid.  This is in part due to topography, and in part due to another grand feature of what makes her somewhat special in North American standards of cities: foundation era historical buildings being located in developmental harmony with modern structures.  These are everywhere in the city and surroundings, probably due to the Canadian virtue of a respectful, if somewhat nearly religious attitude toward the past.  As I can probably break many such images into further posts, I will just present a few of the most striking examples, with captions, here.

This is Campbell House, one of, if not the, oldest surviving houses in Toronto.  Despite being so deep into the retail core of tightly-packed Queen Street west, the Georgian survivor still bears a large lawn space and stands out even while it is near other historic buildings of larger scale.  Campbell House is a fine example of how the cityscape has not demolished a sense of historical memory, which will be useful in building a better Toronto.

This is the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, one of the best surviving examples of Canadian Railroad grandeur, typical of the Edwardian and Late Victorian architecture still in vogue in Canada in the 1920's, long after England and the United States had moved on to other styles.  She was the tallest building in the British Empire when built, and today is dwarfed by the commercial district towers.  Still, she stands out even better this way, another part of a Toronto that cherishes history even while seemingly isolating itself from consciousness of any time period. 

 That said, Toronto is hardly just a museum of Georgian and Victorian glories sharing space with International style homages to Manhattan architecture.  There is indeed that towering business district, complete with canyon like streets that turn a gentle breeze into a violent, chilling wind.

This is also the sort of big city downtown that paves everything over with concrete and maybe throws occupants some rather artificial looking reminders of the nearby presence of nature.

King Street just west of Bay.

Toronto, of course, is full of trees.  Any look beyond the concrete jungle of the money district will demonstrate that.  The residential neighborhoods are well-treed, with an urban canopy that does a fairly good job at hiding most of what lies below.  Toronto does this better than most other cities I have seen, with the only other dense urban canopy of comparison being in Detroit (honorable mentions given to smaller southern cities like Richmond, Memphis, and Charleston).

Notice the twenty story apartments at the end of this relatively well-treed residential street, a typical example of the merging of densities common in the cityscape.

Then there is the abundance of park space and natural land which we covered in our last post.  Spurred on by Hurricane Hazel and given continuing promotion by environmental groups, the city has enough green space to compete well on the world stage in this regard.  Sadly, especially if there have been no recent rains, Toronto does not have a pristine blue sky to prove this point to the average visitor.  The sky is bleak and brown, not quite to the level of Los Angeles or Mexico City, but definitely far worse than what can be found in New York or even industrial Gary, Detroit, or Pittsburgh.  This is in part because Toronto has a very typical North American addiction, the automobile.  Highway 401, the main artery of traffic in the Montreal-Chicago corridor has the responsibility of moving not just a heavy percentage of trade between the United States and Canada (and thus also land based trade between Canada and Mexico), but also commuter traffic between the city and its eastern and western suburbs.  Southern Californians may mock the concept, but Toronto often has worse traffic than the usual nightmares one can find on Los Angeles parking lo... er freeways.  The horizon suffers for it dearly, and while I did notice that breathing was not the chore it seemed to be in London or Mexico City, the place is far from having a nice effect in the sinuses. 

She also has an ugly side here and there.  While on the whole Toronto is a fairly clean place (as bad as the locals claim it can be, the subway here is miles ahead of the smelly mess down in Manhattan and about the same as London's Tube), some of the infrastructure does show age and deterioration.  The Gardiner Expressway, in addition to being an eye sore which has long since divided downtown from the waterfront on Lake Ontario, looks rusty, broken, and far more Detroit or Chicago than Toronto.

In some places the electric lines, streetlights, and streetcar cables add to the dated image of the city, which, to be fair, is not entirely a bad thing.  Toronto definitely looks like it just stepped out of the late 19th century on some streets:

Queen Street east in an area called "the Beach" or "the Beaches", depending on who you ask.

That said, a quick turn of the head usually shows off the ever present construction going on.  This is a very strange, amazing city that refuses to forget itself, even while it also thinks too much or too little of itself.

Those are the buildings of the Ontario Legislative Assembly, a.k.a. Ontario Provincial Parliament.  They are surrounded by an ever expanding provincial capital. 

 Expect more up close looks at various little bits of Toronto, and of North American cities in general.  Remember, there is always something right around the corner that is worth taking another, if not a first look, at.