Toronto Musings

I don’t know if you’re been to american cities as a torontonian, though I’m guessing that you’re from toronto reading this blog, however, large american cities are humongous compared to us. I’m not talking about rochester, or minneapolis, I’m talking about the big swingin’ cities obviously – new york city, los angeles and chicago. I’ve only been to new york and los angeles of the three, however, it stands to reason that i would also be overwhelmed by the size of chicago (despite it being approximately the same population as toronto).

i’m no city planner, and hell, I’m barely a writer but i know this: what makes a city a city is the fact that there’s hubs of activity all over it. Toronto is no different. If you’re not from here, we have several hot spots, including the downtown core which encompasses the entertainment and fashion districts, queen west, west queen west, king west, the junction, roncesvalles, trinity bellwoods, the HARBOUR FRONT just to name several. Los angeles is similar with all of its smaller cities jammed into one giga-city, except it’s not walkable whatsoever.

That’s what I mean though, is that los angeles sprawls over an area that is absolutely laughable to a walking city. los angeles is approximately double the size of square kilometres to toronto, 1215km to our paltry 631 km. And of course, los angeles (and its smaller, more disparate cousin, san francisco) offloaded its car culture onto us so now we’re not a walking city either.

A little aside about that: rideshares are proving to increase traffic, not mitigate it. there are legit studies about that, from the us national household travel survey. I won’t poo poo on the safety that most rideshares give by being available when transit is not, however, in a city with a fairly robust transit system, rideshares have a tendency to increase congestion 7-9%. so what I’m getting at is that i resent silicon valley for burdening us with this problem.

i had a talk with some people on twitter where we discussed hot toronto summer, and what that meant. It is nostalgic at this point, however i think hot toronto summer is encompassed by the safety at night that a lot of these big american cities aren’t capable of. we have (or had) more support systems for houseless folks, addicts, and pre-fentanyl being spread throughout toronto, it was super chill at night time. you could walk home alone at like 3 AM as a woman, and have a great time if you were in the right neighbourhood which about 10 years ago was most of them. I might not recommend it now, however, it was totally doable back then.

It’s wild now that toronto is even remotely unsafe, in my opinion, because it was always one of the safest large metropolises in north america. There are obviously more dangers now, so i wouldn’t recommend walking around alone anywhere at 3 am, but in a group? Sure.

i will be engaging in hot toronto summer, with a group of gal pals.