Urbanism 101

A StatsCan report confirms the obvious this morning: the lower your neighbourhood’s population density, the more likely you are to travel by car. This does not come as news to the suburbs, which were invented by cars. The real burning question left behind in the report’s wake is this: who are the 43% of Torontonians who live within five kilometers of the city centre yet who drive their cars for all their daily trips? And, more to the point, what do they have to say for themselves? They could be reverse commuters; they could also be Rosedale residents who, despite having a subway line to shuttle them to and from work in minutes, drive anyway. Either way, they got some ’splainin’ to do. “