General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

I don't think the people who live in downtown Toronto do so for jobs, I think they do so because they want to live in downtown Toronto.

I find this highly unlikely, although I'm certainly biased as someone who would never live downtown Toronto.

According to this page: https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/d...e-centres/

Compared with the rest of the City, Downtown and the Centres have:

• more adults in their twenties and thirties;
  
• more single person households; and
  
• fewer families with children.
  

I think this implies the average living space is much too small in our urban center. When people want to move in with their partners, and especially if they want to have children, 600sqft is not enough space. It can also be that many people (such as me) don't think North American downtowns are a good place to raise a family.

For Downtown residents, being close to work was the most important reason.

And this is certainly a direct argument against your claim. Although many factors beyond that go in to making the decision where to live...

And while I haven't seen cause and effect properly established, studies about density and happiness (usually life satisfaction) clearly shows people are less happy living in urban centers.

I think you kind of make the point, you don't want to live downtown, some but people do. I think it's very presumtive to assume people who live in different housing from one's self must be miserable. I certainly don't think that people living in the suburbs are miserable because they live in a suburb and that would make me miserable.

As for sizing, yes, I completely agree that there should be larger developments downtown, but for the reason you give, that people want bigger homes to house families, this was a struggle for me moving to DTK, but I did manage to find a condo to my liking--they do exist, even if they don't get built anymore.

Now as for happiness, that's an interesting point, but there are other factors, urban centres are not one group, for one, and the features of a particular urban centre may have an impact.  Measuring happiness is also not totally cut and dry. Also, conservatives (who live outside of cities more often) tend to measure higher on some happiness measures, in some places.  That alone could explain the difference between urban and suburban areas.