About

Introduction

When I was just a young lad growing up in east-most Scarborough, going somewhere new would amaze me. I remember how cool I thought the elevated RT tack was when I first remember going to the Scarborough Town Centre, or the first time I walked with my Mom through residential streets in the Annex, how amazed I was that everywhere didn’t look like where I grew up in Scarborough with big houses  and driveways with two car garages. Taking the GO train downtown would always be an exciting adventure. Toronto always held lots of new experiences and interesting places.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that though. Like a lot of people, Toronto became a place that lacks confidence or quality. If there was anything you liked about Toronto, it had to be placed behind a string of negativity first, to ensure you weren’t one of those crazy people who thought Toronto was great.

Well I don’t believe that anymore (or maybe I’ve just become one of those crazy people). Now I love Toronto. I’ve described it as a mother’s love, where you learn to appreciate everything about it, whether you like it or not.

I changed once again, and started to wonder again, and I started to wander. Inspired by people like Jane Jacobs and Shawn Micallef, and quite frankly, just this city itself, I wanted to explore, see what’s there, appreciate it, and more often than not, be fascinated by it. I started walking in more downtown and old Toronto areas, but then started wanting to explore the suburbs more as well. I know from growing up in Scarborough, that there are lots of interesting places, and interesting things to see in the suburbs too.  And even when there’s not, I want to understand, and appreciate every part of Toronto, because like it or not, we’re all part of this singular entity. The goal is not to judge, or determine which are the best, or coolest, or worst neighbourhoods, but to understand and appreciate the richness of diversity that is Toronto’s neighbourhoods.

It was mentioned to me, to take pictures of what I saw, and post them, or write a blog about the places I go. I thought it was a good idea, to share my wandering experiences with others, and maybe encourage them to have some of their own.  And so the Neighbourhood Walks Project was born. I decided I would make a neighbourhood map of Toronto, and eventually walk around in all of them.

The Neighbourhood Map

(This part is mostly an explanation and justification of how I came up with my neighbourhood map, so if you’re not interested skip this section)

In the exploration of the city I decided to go with neighbourhoods over streets or strips. While criss-crossing and intersecting streets can be a great way to explore the city, I chose the locus centric approach of neighbourhoods. Imagine the city is a huge network of intersecting venn diagrams and you’ll get an idea of what I mean. The intersections of those venn diagrams are like neighbourhood boundaries, overlapping. But for practical purposes I had to create a neighbourhood map. So here’s what I did.

I consulted a variety of sources. The most useful of which were  The Toronto Star, Wikipedia, City of Toronto, and Ork Posters, who recently made a cool Toronto neighbourhood poster map. I tried to get a consensus out of these guys, but on the basis of my priorities for creating a neighbourhood map. The conditions were that I wanted to create reasonably sized neighbourhoods (urban obviously ending up smaller than suburban), without sacrificing the identity of those neighbourhoods. The Toronto Star has neighbourhoods that are too small, the city designated neighbourhoods are too large. Wikipedia and Ork had good sizes, but the boundaries (particularly Ork which doesn’t demarcate) were difficult to tell. Sometimes I had to infer where the boundaries were. The boundaries obviously differed and I tried to balance and consolidate that effect. However there are still microneighbourhoods like Trefann Court, or overly large neighbourhoods like Downsview that will likely have to be done in parts, but I did the best I could.

Furthermore, I abhor dead zones. The Toronto Star map is full of them, where dead zones were created, I would often bring two neighbourhoods closer together to offset this. A good example of this is Dorset Park and Wexford were brought closer together to avoid a dead zone. Other times a small gap filling neighbourhood was brought in to remove a dead zone. An example of this is the Upper Jarvis Corridor neighbourhood that gap fills the space between the village and St. James Town plus Cabbagetown. Other times, parks or cemeteries or other types of spaces weren’t really part of a neighbourhood. I wanted to explore them anyway, so I would often tack them on. Like I did with St. James Town by including the St. James cemetery for which it owes its namesake.

In some circumstances, I separated special areas which could be included in a neighbourhood. I did this with Ryerson, UTSC, and the zoo, which could be part of the Garden District, Highland Creek, or Rouge. Some places that aren’t really neighbourhoods like High Park are considered to be so, because they are a large enough area to explore on their own.

There were some other specific decisions made which I will mention. I specifically separate Chinatown East and Little India out of Riverdale, as well as Chinatown out of its surrounding areas, because I felt they had an important enough identity on their own. This took a bit of hedging, so don’t expect too much out of those boundaries. I typically think that strips such as Queen West, or Bathurst are not really neighbourhoods, and are shared by many neighbourhoods. However, sometimes this does occur as with the Bay St. Corridor, or the amalgamated neighbourhood of Niagara + West Queen West. In the latter case, I was left with an orphaned zone between King and Queen, and Dufferin and Bathurst, so I combined it with Niagara. Also without much precedent (I kinda just made it up), I split up the awkwardly shaped Islington neighbourhood into the “Islington” portion (actually around Islington) and the part west of Kipling into “Sherway Gardens.” I could have just left it as is, and split the post up into two parts, but I felt it was so awkward it was unrepresentative, and that Sherway Gardens had enough of an identity of its own to justify it.

It isn’t a perfect process, and there are lots of flaws and different ways of doing things. I’ll probably discover more of them myself, so don’t be afraid to give me feedback. Just don’t be offended if I don’t take it. Keep in mind that my purpose was to create useful, manageable, explorable chunks as much as possible.

All in all, I ended up with 203 Neighbourhoods. With a pretty even split of 102 Old Toronto Neighbourhoods, and 101 in the inner suburbs.

Just “City of Toronto” Neighbourhoods?

Its already pretty ambitious as it is, but I will in all likelihood explore regions of the Outer Suburbs or GTA as well. Just not in the comprehensive way I am planning on exploring the City of Toronto. So expect some “Outer Walks” posts somewhere down the line. I will also likely explore some non-neighbourhood areas in Toronto and post about those as well. Maybe even post stuff from any travels I take.