London has one called River Bend, which also features a golf course within. I'm not sure if there is a condominium corporation involved.

I am pretty sure they are legal provided the city doesn't own the streets or any of the land within them. If it's all private property (which can be owned collectively by the residents) from the point where you leave the city property/street, then you can gate it off if you want, just like you can fence off a single home lot if you want.

I wonder what the daily tonnage transport on the 401 through Toronto is. I find the GTA suburbs incredibly ugly but, as a function of sprawl, they are no where in the league of most US metros; abundant 1/4 acreages, no sidewalks, much high percentage of abandonment and, miles to go for milk. Most larger subdivisions of the last 20 years here are designed with a commercial component that is within walking distance of most homes. For this, all of the larger builders have commercial divisions.

^ I think suburbs are generally ugly in North America, apart for some around New York City (Long Island) or Chicago (North Shore). Mostly because they're modern I guess.

For every Markham/Richmond Hill/Brampton there is a Laval/Mascouche/Repentigny.

Boston has nice suburbs (visually) too, though they are large-lot SFH and low-density.

The way suburbs are built these days in the GTA is very different than the norm in mid-size Canadian cities. New suburban developments in cities like London and Kingston have zero provision for any commercial development within walking distance. One of the new subdivisions in the west end of London is a 30-minute walk from the nearest convenience store. I was very surprised a few years ago when I visited a new development in suburban Milton (itself a suburb serving both Toronto and Hamilton), and saw commercial development under construction in the neighbourhood - and it was even pedestrian-oriented with street-facing entrances. You'd never see that in Southern Ontario outside the GTHA and maybe Ottawa.

Today's Toronto Star had an interesting article on the subject of walkability: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015...t-pay-off.html - It's interesting to see that walkable neighbourhoods are becoming more desirable in large cities with long commute times from the suburbs, while in mid-sized cities the traditional suburban development model is still king.

With housing prices in the GTA soaring through the stratosphere, could it just set up even more development farther afield? Although the closest places not subject to the Places to Grow Act are about 150 km from downtown Toronto.

I don't even think of Surrey's general sprawl as that bad. That's cause I don't really mind sprawl as long as it's within a grid layout. The arterials, being straight, can be easily urbanized while those who want to live in SFH can still have their quiet streets within them. So commercial areas, even if autocentric power centres, are usually located on major intersections, rather than some random corner of the "master-planned community" When I think of real bad sprawl, I think of Surrey/Langley's new sprawl, like the Clayton Heights neighbourhood. Or Morgan Crossing in White Rock.

I do hate the modern way of building suburbs even more than before though: roads have gotten even curlier, and now they're packing the houses so close together you might as well be living in a townhouse. It's removed pretty much the only benefit of suburbia, which is having lots of space.

Montreal has some nice suburbs as well. Rosemere is a historic suburb and has its charm. Many areas in the West Island are nice too. Mont-Saint-Hilaire is not old, but I think it looks good with the combination of the houses, the hill and the streets going through the forest. But remove the hill and the forest and you get a bland suburb similar to the others.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/2igf8tt.jpg

The closest place to downtown Toronto NOT subject to the Places to Grow Act is Oxford County, about 130 km away.

To the north, Muskoka is about 160 km away, and to the east, Hastings is about 150 km away.

I completely agree, and we should have treated it like they do in Edinburgh, nothing outside the greenbelt except for farms.

The greenbelt should extend to Carp road in the West, Trim in the East and Mitch Owens in the South. That would have given alot of redevelopment and intesification within the greenbelt and would likely have resulted in a Subway and much better Transit to everything everywhere. A huge increase in walkability as well.

We really dropped the ball on that.

St. Lambert and Rosemere/Lorraine are probably the nicest. Some on-island suburbs are nice too.

If that was the case, communities outside Ottawa would likely be several orders of magnitude bigger...imagine 50,000 people in, say, Kemptville?

To be fair, that first gated community is Swan Lake in Markham. It's a 55 plus community so really it's just a way for the residents there to maintain a quiet neighborhood. The funniest thing about Swan Lake is that they built it around a spring fed pond my friends and I knew as Turtles Cove. We used to spend our summers over there exploring as kids and as we got older we used to camp over there drinking and heading back into the burbs pool hoping late at night. There was suppose o be a moratorium in place to stop any sort of development north of 16th avenue back then because the farm land in the region is some of the most fertile and productive in North America. It's a shame Markham allowed for development almost to it's border with Stouffville now. I think it's tougher to build on farm land now but it's still happening to a lesser extent. Damn I hate the burbs

It surpassed LA several years ago and is now the densest urban area in Canamerica.

I would say some of New York City's closer suburbs are quite dense, no? Maybe at the magnitude of Mississauga or less likely Brampton? I found them to be quite dense considering they are suburbs.

A thread about sprawl that hasn't even mentioned Calgary yet, that's impressive!

EDIT: Posted some Calgary sprawl pics but links got all wonky. Might try again later.

Were leaving it up to Calgary locals like yourself to add it just to keep the peace haha.

The closer ones can be dense, for sure. However many of these date back from the 1920s/30s, if not earlier. And have historic town centres. Some of the 1940s/50s growth areas seem reasonably dense as well. It's after that things get really sprawly with large estate lots, leapfrogged developments and whatnot. The type of tract development you see in Mississauga and Brampton doesn't really exist on the east coast of the US.