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I hear a lot of discussion about how Toronto is a rapidly expanding city and growing in population, but it really isn't that unique when compared to other US cities.

According to this survey, Toronto is the 200th fastest growing city behind US cities like Phoenix, Portland, Denver, Houston, Dallas, Riverside, Sacramento, and even Orlando. It's also neck and neck with Miami and Seattle.

All this time I though Toronto was unique in the sense it was growing faster than other North America cities, but it really isn't. Miami is projected to be bigger than Toronto in 10 years.

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_growth2.html

has anyone else experienced this? The water pipes inside my unit can be heard even when I have my TV on (louder than my TV sometimes). The property management tells me that its normal, but I find that hard to believe given that the unit is less than 5 years old.

Thanks

Now I want to start this thread off by saying I'm all in favour of Community Centres, and I'd love to see them with longer hours, lower fees and better facilities.

BUT......

I'm starting to think the City of Toronto has a Community Centre Addiction!

What got me thinking about this is the newly published capital plan that shows Eight, count'em 8 additional community centres to be built over the next 10 years, that's on top of the 130 facilities the City of Toronto already has!

That will give Toronto, 138 facilities by 2019.

That seems a bit excessive! I mean that's one rec centre to every 20,000 people roughly, even allowing for projected population growth, not more than 1 to 25,000.

Two quick comparison show Mississauga and Brampton both with 10-12 facilities and populations ranging from 500,000 - 700,000.

That gives a facility per resident stat of between 1 per 50,000 and 1 per 65,000 roughly.

Now there's nothing wrong with having more facilities in Toronto than neighbouring areas, especially since we're not as car-centric a city.

But more almost 2.5x the number per resident today, with an additional 8 facilities on top of that?

Moreover, many exisiting facilities certainly could use upgrades or expansions, or just some maintenance. Not to mention, that the hours for Toronto facilities often see them close at 6pm on a Saturday, and almost never go beyond 10pm at most sites, on any night of the week.

By contrast many suburbs and other Ontario Cities are offering late night service, at least on the weekends, to as late at 3am.

Surely we should invest in what we have first, before adding and endless number of new facilities.

Proposed new sites include City of York (to be fair they had none before, so I get this one); North-west North York; North-East Scarborough, Regent Park, Wabash (north Parkdale); Canadian Tire (Bessarion/Concord Park Place); Warden Corridor; Railway Lands; plus 3 large scale expansions, Edithvale, O'Connor and Milliken.

Thoughts?

Do we really need this many new facilities? Is this a good use of resources?

I don't know if many are interested in the lighting program. But if you are and you have taken a look down in that area, you'll notice some historic buildings have been lit. The idea to have such a lighting program is great, but if it going to look the way i saw it tonight, then I'm really disappointed.

Gooderham Building- better known as the Flat Iron Building, was very poorly lit. Spots of white light on the sides of the building and the base dark and night.

South side of Front street- SAME STORY... except there were a couple of windows that were lit ever so nicely.

Other buildings included in this initiative are St Lawrence Market, St Lawrence Hall and St James Cathedral.

I do hope that they are still in the midst of adding more light. But if not..typical.

"In an effort to increase transparency and improve information flow, a web site containing data on public transit, parks and recreation, daycare facilities, and more has been made available for the first time in such an open way. " blogTO.com

Fascinating website, especially for UT members. DATA!DATA!DATA!

http://www.toronto.ca/open/

From TEYCC November 10

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2...file-24707.pdf

AoD