Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[ac3r]

Do you think Toronto would be Toronto without the Gardiner?

No, I think Toronto would be so much better without the Gardiner. If you look at the stats for how people arrive into downtown Toronto it's responsible for such a small fraction, but it divides downtown Toronto in two and cuts it off from the waterfront. Downtown Toronto could be so much more walkable if we got rid of the Gardiner.

I think I should have phrased that better by saying do you think Toronto would have become the city it is now without it. It has been a vital tool in making the core of the city into what it is today. While it is not as busy as it was in the past, it certainly helped the city and continues to do so.

Though, I'm curious what you mean by it "divides downtown Toronto". In what way does it divide anything? Just its physical presence? I know there have been decades worth of research and theory developed that attempt to make the claim that highways and rail lines and such divide cities in negative ways. More often than not, though, the reality is quite different. These high volume arteries function like the arteries in a human being. They provide important connections and thoroughfares through an area, which is especially important when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands to millions of people. We absolutely need them.

Take any of the great cities on this planet. Tokyo, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, London, New York City, Berlin etc. They all have an endless list of large physical structures that intersect parts of the city whether they are elevated metro lines, train lines, highways...these days even elevated parks and footpaths. There is nothing preventing people from going underneath these structures, so they don't really "divide" anything. Tokyo has utterly massive corridors for transportation that cut through the city, but it's impossible to argue that Chūō is cut off from Minato despite the dozens of elevated rail lines and roads that sit between the two areas, or that the Shuto Expressway that cuts through the city has a detrimental effect on Tokyo. There are still streets and sidewalks underneath.

Is this just a "cars = bad + you should walk everywhere" thing?