Charles St GRT terminal redevelopment

[bravado]

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.

[ac3r]

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

It's not just you. Even Londoners know London is a bit of a dump haha.

I've noticed some areas looking a lot worse in the last couple years, though. I put a lot of blame on who is now occupying many of these properties. In the last 5 years, the street my parents live on has had 10 homes sell, all but 2 of which were bought up by people who are now just renting them out to students. It's now what you'd expect. Snow is almost never shovelled, ice becomes a regular hazard, the lawns are a total disaster and the curbs usually have trash on them because the occupants can't seem to figure out why the recycling crews won't take the giant unfolded boxes, the old electronics they try to throw out or seem to believe there is some magical fairy that comes to clean up their green bin waste after a racoon gets into it.

Obviously those living there aren't fully responsible for mowing the lawns or even shovelling the snow, but come on. When I was young and a renter, I still cut my own damn grass and picked up any rubbish that didn't get picked up. All it takes is a couple weeks for a combination of lazy landlords and stupid youth to make a neighbourhood look horrible.

[danbrotherston]

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.