Ugly Suburban Sprawl Capital of Canada

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Rereading this thread, and looking at it from a broader perspective, there are few countries in the world that do new suburban areas "truly well". We are not the only ones struggling with this.

Being from where we are from, we tend to view new suburban areas in other countries as "better", simply because they are different from what we are accustomed to. But the reality is that, with few exceptions, humanity - wherever it is located - has a lot of problems with matching up the modern age (and its transportation biases and needs) with attractive built environments and human settlements.

If you've ever spent any time on the modern outskirts of even the most charming and historic European cities, you'll know what I mean.

+1
Pockets of suburban Paris on the RER train to Versailles reminded me of high density areas of Scarborough.

[yaletown_fella]

I read last year that Kelowna is the most car dependant 100k+ jurasdiction in Canada. I was there last summer and found the undeniable natural beauty (almost exactly like Mendocino NorCal), terrible planning, and bizarre layout to be quite intriguing. However, most of the houses are stucco.

I find the Barhaven area outside of Ottawa to be amoung the most undesirable because it's too dense and too isolated from amenities.

[Bluenote]

That census was back in 2006, back then Edmonton and Calgary were booming a heck of a lot more then they are now. The Boom is now in Saskatoon , Regina and Winnipeg to an extent. Since then Winnipeg has gone off the deep end in urban sprawl eating up very good farm land, and unlike the area of Calgary and Edmonton, it is FLAT here, we dont have a Valley or hils to go around, so when we sprawl it is actual houses and what not. I hate it to be honest.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Bluenote

That census was back in 2006, back then Edmonton and Calgary were booming a heck of a lot more then they are now.

The dirty little secret about Calgary is that the boom never really stopped. We added another 3% to the population in the past year. Plenty of new subdivisions are going up, they just get buried in the rest these days.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by Bluenote

That census was back in 2006, back then Edmonton and Calgary were booming a heck of a lot more then they are now. The Boom is now in Saskatoon , Regina and Winnipeg to an extent. Since then Winnipeg has gone off the deep end in urban sprawl eating up very good farm land, and unlike the area of Calgary and Edmonton, it is FLAT here, we dont have a Valley or hils to go around, so when we sprawl it is actual houses and what not. I hate it to be honest.

They should just dredge out another floodway on the west side of the city, give the city some geographic barriers and force some density

[dleung]

I posted these maps on another thread, but here may be more appropriate:

http://env-blogs.uwaterloo.ca/atlas/?page_id=457

The above link contains a series of maps each for Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, Winnipeg, St Johns, Halifax, Kingston, Ottawa, Toronto, Sudbury, SW Ontario, Montreal, Saguenay, Sherbrooke, Quebec City, Regina and Saskatoon. Posted are 2 of the available map types: age of dwelling, and dwelling type, for the 3 largest cities.

Note that the maps are created using census tract data, so in some cases uninhabited areas within a populated census tract might be coloured in.















note: Montreal's relatively greater proportion of low-rise housing (vs detached/attached); Vancouver's surprising lack of yellow dots given the number of condo towers (fewer households per high-rise); the concentration of new homes in Toronto's periphery

[vid]

It's amazing how many people live in Stanley Park, isn't it? And all of them in mid- to high-rises!

[vanman]

There are thousands of ewoks that live in the trees of Stanley Park vid. Many of those trees are well over 150ft and therefore could be easily classified as highrises.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by vid

It's amazing how many people live in Stanley Park, isn't it? And all of them in mid- to high-rises!

It's probably just part of the dis-information area.

Quite a few living in the UBC forest lands too.

[vid]

I think it goes by census tract. I am not sure if you can prevent the GIS programme from scattering data in the parks, but adding a parks layer and preventing the dots from overlapping them would have given an even more accurate look.

Another example is Toronto's Rouge River Valley disappearing.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by vid

I think it goes by census tract. I am not sure if you can prevent the GIS programme from scattering data in the parks, but adding a parks layer and preventing the dots from overlapping them would have given an even more accurate look.

Another example is Toronto's Rouge River Valley disappearing.

The population of Burlington Bay is also surprisingly high. Maybe it's houseboats?

[Doady]

The second map of Toronto shows why the sprawl is so bad. Not only does Toronto sprawl outward, it sprawls upward too, so it's like two times worse than other cities.

[SignalHillHiker]

To keep it in perspective...

A picture of suburban Mexico City by Pablo Lopez Luz:

http://i.imgur.com/yYa6f.jpg

(This was the source, linked from Reddit).

I find it oddly beautiful...

[MexiQuebecois]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

To keep it in perspective...

A picture of suburban Mexico City by Pablo Lopez Luz:

http://i.imgur.com/yYa6f.jpg

(This was the source, linked from Reddit).

I find it oddly beautiful...

That's Ecatepec. I don't think you'd want to live there though

http://goo.gl/maps/r61vg

[Vertigo3000]

Since when did Kempenfelt bay in Barrie get built over? they have dots over the bay. And Collingwood-Wasaga is nowhere near as big as Barrie and there is no mid to high rises either, the tallest is 4 stories.