As a lifelong NYer now living in Toronto I beg to differ. Sure it’s smaller than NYC by almost every metric except land size, but it has hidden pockets of community and life if you look for them. Compared to NYC, Toronto is greener, friendlier, and better for artists.
Unfortunately you are correct in your assessment that gentrification and shitty developers are trying to strip it for parts, even Sneaky Dee’s is at risk right now, but the same exact thing can be said about nearly every city in the US and Canada. In NYC just last year we all banded together to narrowly defeat a proposal that threatened to demolish Coney Island and replace it with a dystopian mega casino - and that was just one of six casino proposals that year. I don’t see it as a failure of each respective city but rather as the result of festering capitalism and an antagonistic government beyond city borders, especially since it’s often done against the will of the people who actually live there. Ford’s stupid spa is another example
For what it’s worth, I do miss NYC and all my friends and loved ones out there. As they say, you can take the NYer out of NY but you can’t take NY out of the NYer. I look forward to the day I can visit again and help bridge the artist communities between them, I truly do love both cities.
As a lifelong NYer now living in Toronto I beg to differ. Sure it’s smaller than NYC by almost every metric except land size, but it has hidden pockets of community and life if you look for them. Compared to NYC, Toronto is greener, friendlier, and better for artists.
Unfortunately you are correct in your assessment that gentrification and shitty developers are trying to strip it for parts, even Sneaky Dee’s is at risk right now, but the same exact thing can be said about nearly every city in the US and Canada. In NYC just last year we all banded together to narrowly defeat a proposal that threatened to demolish Coney Island and replace it with a dystopian mega casino - and that was just one of six casino proposals that year. I don’t see it as a failure of each respective city but rather as the result of festering capitalism and an antagonistic government beyond city borders, especially since it’s often done against the will of the people who actually live there. Ford’s stupid spa is another example
For what it’s worth, I do miss NYC and all my friends and loved ones out there. As they say, you can take the NYer out of NY but you can’t take NY out of the NYer. I look forward to the day I can visit again and help bridge the artist communities between them, I truly do love both cities.