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Originally Posted by Docere
Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the Beltline separate historic North Toronto from Yonge-St. Clair, connecting Davisville, Yonge and Eglinton and "Uptown Yonge" with the more suburban Lytton Park and so on, so you can kinda "feel" the change. OTOH Davisville and Yonge/Eg are (mostly) part of the densely populated part of the St. Paul's electoral district, rather than part of North York-centered electoral districts where more suburban outlooks dominate.
What's interesting is there's an Uptown BIA north of Eglinton and a Midtown BIA at Davisville.
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Yes, I agree. It's interesting in that North Toronto was right at Eglinton and Yonge (North Toronto Collegiate is on Broadway Ave, a little north but the original village known as North Toronto was centred around the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton to Broadway or so....heck town hall was on the NW corner of Yonge n Broadway), and well, that history has become less relevant as times have changed. Seeing all this new construction molding this area into a high density hub...which definitely wouldn't share the same concerns as suburbanites in Lytton Park, or out toward Avenue Road, or Mt. Pleasant etc, is turning out to be rather interesting I find....the area had for years been on the edge of a suburban/urban edge I'd almost say, and now is definitely becoming it's own urban core.
Is it strange? Yes....because (like you said), there's a lot of different neighbourhoods around, like "Uptown Yonge"...which leads up to the 401, is much like a small town's downtown core.....but then you see a massive wall of skyscrapers now that lets you know you're entering the Yonge n Eglinton area. You can definitely "feel" it going north to south, west to east....it's very strange, especially for anyone whose lived in the area for years.
I think in 20 years, Yonge and Davisville to Eglinton will come to be quite a substantial area in general in terms of population. Though I think there will be some modifications necessary to the electorate maps at some point...the growth in soem parts is explosive, like the NE quadrant of Yonge and Eglinton south of Keewatin, but west of Mt. Pleasant.
Oh, and yes...the Beaches are really quite a unique place in Toronto's general context. There's no place quite like it in the city, and despite it being a little bit of a ways from downtown, it has great bones as an older streetcar suburb. Toronto's general lean to the west in terms of more...emphasis in a way is really interesting. I'm not so sure of exactly why, but I gather the area settled earlier with settlers havign known the trails and area from trading posts from the Mississaugas, and later on with the establishment of what is now U of T. (which likely helps bolster growth in the area, and yes, of course it helped that Queens Park came into being as well)
With more railway connections to communities west like Hamilton and London, I suppose industry grew more in that immediate direction....and housing/ neighbourhoods followed.
One big thing I forgot to mention as well is the geography in the eastern part of the city definitely plays a role....the ravines and creeks that run through the East (Taylor Massey Creek, Don Valley), along with the way they meandered and cutoff much of what's now East York really made it tough for people to settle in the area until much later on.