I just wanted to pick everyone's brains here on as to why I think or you think Southwestern Ontario south of say K-W/Cambridge, has developed at the rate it has. By this I mean slower than one would think and do you agree with my opinion that it's a bit under-developed.
I'm going to use Essex County as my prime example because I am most familiar with it living here, but I would say between here and K-W/Cambridge the growth is relatively the same and it feels slow considering soo many other places in the country seem to be cashing in on a boom.
In Essex County we have the warmest weather in a country known for it's cooler weather, we also get the most sunshine in the country on a yearly basis, and have the longest summers and shortest winters in Canada. We're practially the bananna belt of Canada. I can understand that with our relative flatness in the landscape combined with those two above factors it makes us a prime region for farming and that could be the reason, but I'd still like to explore the idea of why you guys, or anybody thinks that Southwestern Ontario hasn't seem to have grown as much as it seems it could have.
Down here we are surrounded by plenty of fresh water for pleasure seekers and water oriented people.
I know Windsor is perceived as a blue collar lunch bucket auto workers town, but we're also a gateway city.
I know that Toronto is the centre of the universe
, but that aside if you look at Windsor, or even London for that matter, we both have good connectivity to the U.S. Windsor is directly across from Detroit, 5 hrs from Chicago, 4 hrs from Cincinnatti, 4hrs from Buffalo, 3 hrs from Cleveland, 5 hrs from Pittsburgh, 4 hrs from Toronto, and even 10 hrs from New York.
Ya I know I got carried away, but my point is depending on how you look at it we're somewhat centrally located and yet for the most part when you come down this way it feels like you're driving on down to the back country and then oh ya, there's the U.S.! I mean if Detroit wasn't there you would almost feel like you're driving to some isolated small city on the tip of an island, the growth just doesn't trickle down here, or if it does it's slow.
I'm just curious on people's opinions on this and why do you think the growth in Ontario is soo centralized? I know we're within X number of hours drive from alot of places, especially Toronto only being 4 hours away, but in a way it feels like it could be 20hrs away at the same time if you get what I'm saying.
Side note: Correct me if I'm wrong, but when the province gave municipalities the ultimatum to merge or annex to streamline municipalities and municipal services (this when places like London saw a dramatic jump from annexing?) from what I've read over the years in our local papers Windsor and it's surrounding neighbours were really the only region that did not merge or annex. We've seen more rapid growth with respect to suburbs in Windsor's outlying towns which practically rub shoulder to shoulder with Windsor than we have in the city and I can't say it feels like it's benefiting the area. If we're less densely populated because we're a farming region than why is the region soo secular and instead of growing a stronger central city in the county are we constantly paving over farm fields and slapping up more and more strip malls?
I just never understood it. It also always seems like the county and city are at odds on eachother and it's city vs. county while the rest of the province has amalgamated into seemingly stronger regions.
Is it like this where you live as well?