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Originally Posted by Averett
That's pretty insightful, kirk  I live in an American suburb and travel the highway every day from my place, right by the city, to my place of employment which is yet another suburb. Albany isn't a large city, nowhere near the size of Toronto. There are some really nice sections though, but when I hear about people living in Albany city-proper, I wonder why.
I think the only city that doesn't have the stigma of crappy city life would be NYC. Maybe Boston. Other than that, most large American cities just aren't where most people would choose to live. Work, yes. But come 5pm they climb into their SUV and get back to their double driveway.
I understand why you'd consider it the American nightmare. Living in a city and loving it must make you recoil at the horror of suburban living. But for us, it's what we've somewhat been programed to go for.
I'd like to live in a city for awhile. I love the feel of NYC. But I don't know that I'd want to live there forever. I've just become too used to the idea of having a nice 4 bedroom house with a big grassy backyard and the two car garage.
What can I say, I am an American after all
Hmm... thread jack? Sorry guys!
To get it back on track, I have a story about Toronto. I went there for a Jays game years ago. It was fun. The end  |
I am most sorry for you.
When I was in University I was dating a girl who's family lived out in the country. Farm country, not too far from Hamilton. I remember they had this huge 4,000 ft2 house, a couple of barns, 25 acres, etc. Big everything. I remember at the time thinking that it was a life that I might like.
Now, if you were to suggest a lifestyle like that, I would consider it hell on earth.
I have visited quite a few American cities and would agree with you that come 5:00 pm, they empty out (except NYC, now that's an exception. I read somewhere that after the election someone described NYC as "an Island off the coast of Europe. I would agree with that. NYC is the exception, not the rule.)
One time I drove to Pittsburgh a few years ago and had a hotel room right downtown. We arrived around 9:00 or 10:00 pm and I asked the girl if there was a good restaurant nearby that she would reccommend. She looked at me like I was on crack and said, "Now?" "Nothing will be open NOW"
I remember thinking she didn't know what she was talking about. My friend and I walked for about an hour or more up and down deserted streets to no avail. The place was boarded up, barred up, or closed. We were about the only 2 people on the street. I felt like Charlton Heston in the Omega man or something.
Even LA doesn't have the alive inner city feel to it that Toronto has. It's sort of spread all over the place with life here and there.
I was watching a documentary on PBS about the decline of the American city and it was interesting because it all started after WW2 when a few things started happening. One, they started to build interstate highways that cut huge swaths through inner city neigbourhoods (they were using Detroit as an example and how I-75 destroyed a good part of Detroit) and there was the GI program of giving out very very cheap mortgages to returning soldiers, and war workers to build houses in the suburbs, the so called first tier suburbs. (But no blacks could get these mortgages.) So the institution was inherently racially segregationalist.
This combined with the urban modeling of planned communities at the time, and the automobile caused residential city dwellers to "move out" and the tide has never really turned. Somehow living in the burbs was the sought after life in America.
There are now cities in the US that are trying to rejevenated their inner cities and one example they used was Portland Oregon. It's coming slowly, but some people are deciding that living in the inner city is desirable.
Interestingly, there is a consulting firm from Toronto that was hired by the City of Detroit to try and re-establish the inner city in Detroit. This firm, I forget their name, is of the opionion (and I would agree) that in order to have a thriving inner city, you need residential before you need commercial. If you have the residential base, the commercial will follow, not the other way round. Once you loose your residential base, everything else goes to hell. So many US cities have tried "the big fix" to re-establish an alive inner core. They have tried building large sports complexes downtown, or in the case of Detroit, they tried building the Renascence Centre, or entertainment complexes thinking that this will lure people back to the inner city.
Nope, never works.
You need to get people to live downtown, to want to live downtown.
Toronto is an example of how that can be achieved.
In the old parts of Toronto you have a very well balanced commercial and residential component of the city. What often amazes me about Toronto is how you can just turn a corner off of Younge Street, and you are into a residential neighbourhood complete with single family homes. This is something that is missing in the US cities I have seen. Toronto has also the lake at one end of it which effectively prevents the downtown from being ringed by suburbs. Further Toronto was a huge magnet for European immigrants who are used to living a more tight knit urban lifestyle than north Americans. Toronto is a very tolerant city where people for the most part get along pretty good. The immigrant culture combined with the neighbourhood layout of the city has helped maintain the inner city a great place to live. Add to this the way the city is planned and the local rate payers associations who monitor development in the area and you have another effective way of maintaining a sense of community.
Where Toronto sometimes loses it in my eyes is when they tear down old buildings and allow the construction of boxes. I realize that boxes have their place, however, I wish that the architecture was a little bit more interesting than what it is. Other than the CN tower, most of the highrises are fairly nondescript. Toronto lacks an Empire State Building or a Chrysler Building.