06-28-2024, 05:07 AM
(06-27-2024, 10:25 AM)bravado Wrote:(06-27-2024, 10:16 AM)HKodra24 Wrote: Is it just me or does London have far less curb appeal than KW? Many streets where homes are unkept, tired and in need of TLC, I don't see much of that here
London has had a much more significant fall from the industrial highs of the 20th century than KW has and it is an older city that was much more prominent as a local capital than KW ever was since we are closer to Hamilton + Toronto. That means there is just a lot more Victorian and Edwardian and pre-war neighbourhoods there.
Because it has so much more of an older core of buildings than we do, the suburban experiment of growth at the edges has really allowed a lot of spaces to hollow out and get dilapidated. Anyone with money doesn’t bother fixing anything up when a suburban option is readily available. Then you throw in centrally-located higher education and the associated student ghettoes and you get a pretty wild core of a city.
This is a correct assessment. London has a much more substantial downtown and older areas (it was both bigger, but also, a single city, unlike the "tri-cities"--which is really more like two cities and 7-10 villages), but it's also suffered much more of the urban decay as a result...but I don't think this will necessarily stay forever....it is easier to fix urban areas than suburban areas, and our 1960's era sprawl (the majority of the inner suburbs) I think will be seeing some bad days in the future.