[URBAN NOTE] Toronto parochialism
May. 20th, 2010 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI've just come back from a trip to deepest darkest Scarborough, once an independent municipality not altogether different from Mississauga but now a component of amalgamated Toronto. I went to Scarborough so I could go to the Markham Road Animal Hospital, Shakespeare's vet, and pick up more of the cat food prescribed him after an unfortunate and uncomfortable but fortunately quite treatable blockage. It was a long trip, about two and a half hours from my home south to the Dufferin subway station, then almost an hour east to the Warden TTC station and then up the 102 Markham Road, and then all the way back down again.
I don't think that many people think about Scarborough much when they think about Toronto; all the major landmarks--the Eaton centre, City Hall, the CN Tower, the Queen West and Queen East strips, Yonge Street, Bloor--are located in the core city of Toronto. Outside the old city? There be dragons. Thriving communities might lie outside, the vast majority of Torontonians might live outside of the old city's boundaries, and the suburban and high-rise neighbourhoods that I saw clearly relate to thriving communities--often of immigrant stock, South Asian particularly along Markham Road, Sri Lankan and Afghan most notably--but how often do Toronto's urbanists think of these neighbourhoods? Bike lanes might be popular in the old city, but how are they relevant in the rest of the city where motorized vehicles are far more practical? Massive investment in public transit might be an immediate payoff for downtowners, but for people who live an hour's walk away from a subway station what benefit would they derive? Et cetera.
I'm not one to make particular scolding claims about this. I wouldn't have gone to Scarborough if not to get Shakespeare's food. Hell, I'm the sort of Toronto parochialist who thinks that St. Clair West is terra incognita and hardly ever goes to Lansdowne, never mind the Danforth. The "three Torontos" paradigm still holds, the socioeconomic divisions mapping on a general failure to imagine a city including all of its parts, not only the most photogenic. The thing is, I really can't see myself spending that much more time exploring Toronto--I'm a reasonably busy man, most Torontonians are. What to do, then, for me and for Torontonians generally?
I don't think that many people think about Scarborough much when they think about Toronto; all the major landmarks--the Eaton centre, City Hall, the CN Tower, the Queen West and Queen East strips, Yonge Street, Bloor--are located in the core city of Toronto. Outside the old city? There be dragons. Thriving communities might lie outside, the vast majority of Torontonians might live outside of the old city's boundaries, and the suburban and high-rise neighbourhoods that I saw clearly relate to thriving communities--often of immigrant stock, South Asian particularly along Markham Road, Sri Lankan and Afghan most notably--but how often do Toronto's urbanists think of these neighbourhoods? Bike lanes might be popular in the old city, but how are they relevant in the rest of the city where motorized vehicles are far more practical? Massive investment in public transit might be an immediate payoff for downtowners, but for people who live an hour's walk away from a subway station what benefit would they derive? Et cetera.
I'm not one to make particular scolding claims about this. I wouldn't have gone to Scarborough if not to get Shakespeare's food. Hell, I'm the sort of Toronto parochialist who thinks that St. Clair West is terra incognita and hardly ever goes to Lansdowne, never mind the Danforth. The "three Torontos" paradigm still holds, the socioeconomic divisions mapping on a general failure to imagine a city including all of its parts, not only the most photogenic. The thing is, I really can't see myself spending that much more time exploring Toronto--I'm a reasonably busy man, most Torontonians are. What to do, then, for me and for Torontonians generally?
