Danish tourists lament Canadian car culture

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Copenhagen is not a small city, not in a Canadian context anyway.

no, it's not.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are basically three freeways in Toronto- the 401, the Don Valley and the Gardiner. For a North American city, that's an incredibly low number.

You are talking about freeways way the hell out in the sticks.

Yes, if by "way out in the sticks", you mean within city limits. These freeways are all within city limits, not "way out in the sticks":

Freeways in the city of Toronto:

1. Gardiner Expressway
2. Don Valley Parkway
3. 404
4. 401
5. 409
6. 427
7. Allen Expressway
8. 400

How are the 404, 409, 427, Allen, and 400, which all reside well with the city of Toronto "way out in the sticks"? In fact, the Allen Expressway is closer to downtown Toronto than the 401 is.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Now now Crawford, don't go telling someone from Toronto how many freeways their city has.

There are 8 freeways in Toronto city limits, and 12 in the metro area. Whoever told Crawford there are only three freeways in Toronto is taking him for a long ride.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Montreal's CMA has around 4 million now. Considering that Copenhagen has around 2 million, then yes, that is twice the size. If you prefer to be pedantic and use 2.4 or 2.6 or whatever, then it doesn'thave literally twice the population, but it still has significantly more.

Either way, you said that "Montreal is almost the exact same size as Copenhagen-Malmo", which is only remotely true if you're comparing it to the Øresund Region, which is an area of some 21,000 sqkm spread between two countries. Montreal has nearly that many in its 1,500 sqkm urban area.

OK, Øresund Region is less suitable to compare to a Canadian CMA, but more to a US CSA or The Golden Horseshoe.
Montreal (and also Vancouver) is a lot more dense, because it is one of the least sprawling NA metros. CPH in turn is one of the most sprawling European metros. Still, in my book they're in the same category population and area wise.

Show don't tell:

Montreal 3.8 million
Copenhagen-Malmo 3 million+ (on the area shown)


same scale

[dc_denizen]

Having visited Toronto and Montreal, the last thing I would have noted was the autocentricity, especially Montreal where I enjoyed a long bikeride. Dumb and inaccurate observations made to rile people up and validate these Danes' smugness. If anything, Montreal's rowhouses, like Philly should impress the hell out of most urbanists, but this gets nary a mention.

Maybe we should talk about the relatively tiny scale of the historic city centers of Stockholm and Helsinki and the 1950s-70s sprawl of ugly and auto-dependent 3-story suburban garden apartments all over the place.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Show don't tell:

Montreal 3.8 million
Copenhagen-Malmo 3 million+ (on the area shown)


same scale

The river/waterway through Copenhagen runs from as little as 0.25 mile wide to slightly over 1 mile wide. The river/seaway through Montreal runs from as little as 0.8 mile wide to slightly over 5 miles wide.

There's a valid, geographic reason for the large, unpopulated area in the middle of your Montreal map that has nothing to do with housing and neighborhood densities. Put a river/seaway as wide as the St. Lawrence in the middle of the Copenhagen map, or the river/waterway as narrow as the Slusrlobet in Montreal, both maps would look similar.

Therefore, showing doesn't really show all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by electricron

The river/waterway through Copenhagen runs from as little as 0.25 mile wide to slightly over 1 mile wide. The river/seaway through Montreal runs from as little as 0.8 mile wide to slightly over 5 miles wide.

There's a valid, geographic reason for the large, unpopulated area in the middle of your Montreal map that has nothing to do with housing and neighborhood densities.

Therefore, showing doesn't really show all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't understand your comment, please explain what you mean.

What those maps show is that while Montreal is more compact (and more dense), Copenhagen (combined with Malmo) also forms a clearly recognizable interconnected metro area containing a similar number of population even if it "needs" a slightly larger area. It's all geography, there's a sea strait seperating CPH and Malmo (but a bridge/tunnel connecting them) and there are rivers seperating the Island of Montreal from the suburbs.

[ssiguy]

Dear Denmark:

I just visited your country and I was made to feel very welcome by your kind and generous people. That said your country {which was never very interesting to begin with both socially or geographically} is truly ugly.

How can you possibly allow thousands of windmills to be scattered across the landscape and even into the ocean? Don't you realize how incredibly ugly that is? It is also very bad for the animal life as the sound has been proven to effect the birds ability to habitat in the nearby area and flying into them. They also, thanks to your poor planning, effect marine life.

Not only does it make a mess of your countryside {and you have next to none} but you should reduce your electrical requirements as opposed to build more electrical power. Electricity is just like highways, the more you build the more it will get used.

Just when I thought Canadian endless suburban sprawl was ugly, I got a load of your blighted landscape and ocean front.

An offended Canadian.

[Jasonhouse]

Danish tourists lament Canadian car culture

That's funny. I've heard the Canadians who come here to Tampa Fl say the same thing about us. (we have no transit)

[ssiguy]

......Needless to say I was being sarcastic and in no way do I think even 0.0001% of Danes are as rude as these two characters which I am happy to state "were" visitors.

It's not what they said but rather how and when they said it. As for this "surprised" by the freeways well that's just crap. I checked and it seems Denmark does have internet now so a quick 20 second search would have been revealing.

Is a lot of what they said true?..........yes, but I was taught that insulting a country's lifestyle or culture {not human rights} while in the country was considered just plain rude. No it's not a matter of being not having a thick skin but simple manners. I would never dream of going to Denmark and writing such a condescending column to a newspaper.

[Mister F]

I hate to break it to some of my more thin skinned fellow Canadians, but the tourists have a point. We do plan for cars too much and we depend on them too much to get around. Yes, half a dozen or so cities are making serious progress in reversing that trend, at least in their centres. But apart from that, almost everything getting built nowadays is designed around driving.

I see the standard excuse that Europe has older cities that were built before cars. But there's absolutely nothing stopping us from building cities the way we used to. We just choose not to. Our reliance on cars has nothing to do with climate or density or age, it's a choice.

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

One good thing about suburban arterials in a sea of asphalt is it's at least good for cycling given that there's a lot of extra space on the road, no parked cars, easy to dodge busses, and longer stretches between intersections to stop less frequently.

Bike infrastructure is needed more for narrower old city setups where everyone has to compete for and share the limited space.

This....this is sarcasm right? A spoof of some sort? Suburban arterials are awful for cycling.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

I did have to chuckle at the woman suggesting they should have rented a car and drove out of the cities to the parks (which they btw did as was mentioned in the article).

Sadly this attitude is all too typical of Canadians - that cities should be avoided in favour of driving to a lake or the mountains. Unfortunately that attitude has resulted in our cities not getting the investment they need.

Originally Posted by Don't Be That Guy

There's nothing like a great European road trip to dispel the notion that we (North Americans) somehow love cars more than Europeans. What Europe seems to excel at is not making the car a priority as surface lots are rarer in a major city centers, and living in the city center means that you don't have to drive. But the major highways, suburbs and ownership rates show that Europeans love cars just as much.

Europeans do love their cars, they just don't rely on them nearly as much as we do.

Originally Posted by Crawford

And here is a Hamburg example of the typical postwar auto-oriented rebuilding, with a belt highway, modern office blocks, and limited pedestrian accommodations, yet right downtown. Hamburg is actually better than most German cities in this regard; at least there aren't the limited access highways with weird tunnels and overpasses common in other cities.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ha...5c80b97a016024

That's a street by any possible definition. Hell, the street I live on is more highway-like than that.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Mister F

I hate to break it to some of my more thin skinned fellow Canadians, but the tourists have a point. We do plan for cars too much and we depend on them too much to get around. Yes, half a dozen or so cities are making serious progress in reversing that trend, at least in their centres. But apart from that, almost everything getting built nowadays is designed around driving.

I see the standard excuse that Europe has older cities that were built before cars. But there's absolutely nothing stopping us from building cities the way we used to. We just choose not to. Our reliance on cars has nothing to do with climate or density or age, it's a choice.

If you could go back to 1920 and tell the planners to keep building transit oriented neighbourhoods in the face of the increasing affordability of the automobile, or just "delete" the sprawl and start over then sure...

But fast forward today and the average Canadian city is 3/4 post-WWII auto-oriented sprawl... kind of difficult to fix that. It means you've got 3/4 of the city that thinks there should be highways for them to drive on (including to downtown) and parking lots to park at, and it means your downtown cores are at least someone dependent on the suburban areas. It also means any greenfield development will be separated from the core by miles of sprawl. The best hope is for much of the growth to be in the pre-WWII area and expanding the core into 1945-1960 areas that are on a pseudo-grid.

I'm hopeful it's an obstacle that can be overcome, but it certainly is a substantial obstacle.

As for Copenhagen vs Montreal's population, I'd say it's around 2.7 million for Copenhagen and 4.5 million for a comparably sized area of Montreal, and maybe 2.7 million for Vancouver but in an area half the size. Montreal's urban area is about 3.4 million while Copenhagen has I think around 2.1 million in a similar sized area and Vancouver around 2.4-2.5 million. So I'd say it's more like Vancouver in size, and after that it's just smaller cities.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Mister F

I hate to break it to some of my more thin skinned fellow Canadians, but the tourists have a point. We do plan for cars too much and we depend on them too much to get around. Yes, half a dozen or so cities are making serious progress in reversing that trend, at least in their centres. But apart from that, almost everything getting built nowadays is designed around driving.

Of course Canada is too car dependent. But car culture? C'mon. There are a lot of generalizations they make. Or they exaggerate the problems like that.

Does downtown Halifax really have "ginormous swaths" of land for parking. Don't tell me you actually believe this. They make Halifax sound like Indianapolis or something.

And btw is that picture of the two-lane bridge with the segregated bicycle path really supposed to be an example of Canadian "car culture"? Wouldn't a picture of the 401 have made more sense?

[Nouvellecosse]

There's a fairly big surface parking lot on the waterfront (which is tourist central) but other than that there is none I can think of.

[memph]

Maybe they got culture shock expecting Canada to be an ecotopia of quaint little cities in the wilderness similar to how some Japanese tourists get culture shock expecting Paris to be a super spotless beautiful city of super polite people who look all like fashion models.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by memph

As for Copenhagen vs Montreal's population, I'd say it's around 2.7 million for Copenhagen and 4.5 million for a comparably sized area of Montreal, and maybe 2.7 million for Vancouver but in an area half the size. Montreal's urban area is about 3.4 million while Copenhagen has I think around 2.1 million in a similar sized area and Vancouver around 2.4-2.5 million. So I'd say it's more like Vancouver in size, and after that it's just smaller cities.

You guys are perfectely fine to compare US MSAs to Canadian metro areas. What would the populations of Houston and Atlanta be in this above comparison?

CPH is one of if not the most sprawled/spread out metro in Europe relative to it's population (Stockholm and Oslo are contenders too), but still nothing compared to what we "accept" as metro areas in the US.

I could agree if we were talking about a difference in size of the area of a factor 10. In fact this has often been my argument on this forum that you're not comparing the same thing in that case. But we're talking about slightly less population on a slightly larger area.

Fine if you want to sneak in that extra half a mil (or 700,000 actually!) for Montreal just to get to the exact same area, but be sure that you can justify these extra areas as really part of the metro area. And I don't understand how extending borders for Montreal causes CPH to lose 300,000-500,000 all of a sudden?

I've not been to Montreal but I've been to US cities that are far larger than Montreal on paper. Those cities didn't strike me as being in a category above Copenhagen...

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by NorthernDancer

There are 8 freeways in Toronto city limits, and 12 in the metro area. Whoever told Crawford there are only three freeways in Toronto is taking him for a long ride.

Again, there are basically only three freeways in Toronto. This is why the comments from the Danes are so odd. The point is that no city has fewer freeways (apples to apples), so why would you single out the city with the least freeways for having too much freeway capacity?

There's only one freeway anywhere near downtown, and even that kind of on the edge and isn't really cutting directly through the core. The other ones you're citing are little connectors or not relevant to a discussion of urban land use.

[SHiRO]

Wow Crawford, wow... I don't think I've ever encountered this level of delusion.

There are 8 freeways in the city of Toronto. Even if you don't count the "little connectors", there are still 5 not 3!

How can you claim that surface street on Hamburg is a highway "circling the center" (or is it cutting through?) and on the other hand claim there are no freeways cutting through Downtown TO? If I look at a map I can clearly see the Gardiner Expressway cutting Downtown off from the waterside. And surely the Don Valley Parkway circles/edges Downtown more than any of the German autobahnen around Hamburg, which don't come anywhere near the city center.

Truely remarkable...

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Wow Crawford, wow... I don't think I've ever encountered this level of delusion.

Shiro, I'm not even going to argue the Toronto thing, as you can look at Google maps at your leisure and argue with them. There's one freeway in core Toronto, two in the original city limits, and three in any reasonable approximation of urban Toronto, which is fewer than any comparable city in North America.

Re. Hamburg, you completely miss the point, which has nothing to do with arguing over the relative size of parking lots or relative crappiness of German postwar roadway rebuilding, but rather the simple point that Hamburg is different than Copenhagen.

Hamburg is the closest major city to Copenhagen, and has some general similarities allowing for biking, such as flat topography, mild climate, and somewhat similar size and population (yes Hamburg is bigger and more diverse, and Northern Germany isn't exactly alike, but there are strong similarities). Yet despite all this, Hamburg has much lower biking share than Copenhagen, and has much higher auto usage, and has much more autocentric design.

Copenhagen and Amsterdam are huge outliers among the big European cities, and have bike share far above other cities. Denmark and Netherlands are universally known for their crazy high bike share (sometimes 30-40%). They have far higher ridership than nearby cities in Northern Europe, and vastly higher ridership than cities in Mediterranean Europe.

Assuming these Danes aren't complete idiots, and had previously traveled outside of Denmark, why were they shocked when visiting Canada, when they already knew that European cities with similar characteristics as Copenhagen are still quite different in terms of urban design and bike usage?

Wouldn't it be more shocking if Canadian cities were similar to those of Denmark? Tiny Denmark is the outlier, not Canada. Almost no place is similar to Denmark.

[memph]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

You guys are perfectely fine to compare US MSAs to Canadian metro areas. What would the populations of Houston and Atlanta be in this above comparison?

CPH is one of if not the most sprawled/spread out metro in Europe relative to it's population (Stockholm and Oslo are contenders too), but still nothing compared to what we "accept" as metro areas in the US.

I think most US MSAs are too big and I think most other Canadians here, and also some Americans would agree. Part of the problem is they delineate by county which can be quite large, the other part is relatively low commuting thresholds. Houston and Atlanta, for what we're talking about, which is an area of about 2200-2500 square miles would probably be a bit close to 6 million and 5 million respectively.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

I could agree if we were talking about a difference in size of the area of a factor 10. In fact this has often been my argument on this forum that you're not comparing the same thing in that case. But we're talking about slightly less population on a slightly larger area.

Fine if you want to sneak in that extra half a mil (or 700,000 actually!) for Montreal just to get to the exact same area, but be sure that you can justify these extra areas as really part of the metro area. And I don't understand how extending borders for Montreal causes CPH to lose 300,000-500,000 all of a sudden?

I've not been to Montreal but I've been to US cities that are far larger than Montreal on paper. Those cities didn't strike me as being in a category above Copenhagen...

I think the CPH numbers are 2.7 million using 2013/2014 estimates for the Copenhagen-Malmo metro area which is what seems to be shown on your map.

For Montreal, using US Census Bureau methodology, the Montreal MSA would have 4.22 million people in 2011, maybe up to around 4.40-4.45 million today. It includes a fair bit of rural areas, so the land area is a bit on the big side (2800-2900 sq miles) compared to the CPH metro (but still way smaller than US MSAs). You could tweak the boundaries down to remove the rural areas and still be around 4.3 million. Main difference with the Montreal CMA is adding St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Salaberry-de-Valleyfield areas, but also some smaller communities like Marieville and Lavaltrie. You could tweak the boundaries some more to add other cities. Again using US Census methodology, the Montreal CSA would have about 4.6-4.7 million people today and includes Saint-Hyacinthe, Joliette, Sorel-Tracy and Lachute. You could tweak the boundaries to get to some of those added and a population of about 4.5 million.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...72#post6058472

Also, the Montreal CSA is still a lot smaller in land area than Houston and Atlanta's MSAs (let alone CSAs). To get a comparable area to their MSAs, you could add towns like Drummondville, Granby, Louisville, Mont-Tremblant, Cowansville... bringing the population to probably a little over 5 million (for 2013/2014), relatively close to the Atlanta MSA 2013 population estimate.

The Toronto "MSA" would have about 6.4-6.5 million people today, but in about 1/3-1/2 the land area of US MSAs of similar population. The Toronto "CSA" would be around 7.6 million today, and would still cover a smaller land area than most US MSAs (again, let alone CSAs) it's size. For a similar land area of about 9,000-10,000 square miles, you could get close to 9 million people.

Now, I'm not one of those people that says Toronto is about the same size as Chicago, because the 10,000 square mile area is the only comparison in which Toronto comes close, and the commuter patterns aren't the same. Also important is the fact that Chicago's 9.5-10 million people are mostly concentrated in a small part of that land mass, the Chicago urban area still has about 9 million people while Toronto-Hamilton would only have a bit under 7 million in a similar sized area (and arguably still less cohesive, Hamilton imo more independent from Toronto than NW Indiana from Chicago). Part of the reason for the fact that the Greater Golden Horseshoe doesn't have commuting patterns as centered on Toronto as much as American 10,000 sq mi MSAs is that it has some relatively successful cities (Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph for example) which exert their own "pull" despite being close to Toronto. There's still a lot of economic activity going on between these cities though, for example the 401 maintains Average Daily Traffic number of 100,000 vehicles all the way to Cambridge/Kitchener and the QEW pretty much all the way to Niagara Falls.



So:

Using typical US MSA land areas

Chicago: 9.5 million
Toronto: 9 million
Dallas: 7 million
Houston: 6.3 million
Atlanta: 5.5 million
Montreal: 5 million
Copenhagen: 4.5 million
Vancouver: 3 million

Using smaller land areas (more in line with Canadian and Copenhagen metros)

Chicago: 9 million
Toronto: 7 million
Dallas: 6.5 million
Houston: 6 million
Atlanta: 5 million
Montreal: 4.5 million
Copenhagen: 2.7 million
Vancouver: 2.7 million

Using US Census MSA methodology

Chicago: 9.5 million
Dallas: 6.8 million
Toronto: 6.5 million (excludes Hamilton btw! The commuting interchange falls just short. Also excludes Bradford and New Tecumseth)
Houston: 6.3 million
Atlanta: 5.5 million
Montreal: 4.4 million
Vancouver: 2.7 million
Danish cities:?

Using US Census CSA methodology

Chicago: 9.9 million
Toronto: 7.6 million
Dallas: 7.2 million
Houston: 6.5 million
Atlanta: 6.2 million
Montreal: 4.7 million