{"id":8402,"date":"2009-12-20T09:30:46","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T14:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=8402"},"modified":"2009-12-20T21:30:19","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T02:30:19","slug":"highway-interchanges-vs-the-urban-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/12\/20\/highway-interchanges-vs-the-urban-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Highway interchanges vs. the urban city"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A few months ago, Spacing senior editor Shawn Micallef wrote about the size of the auto factories<\/a> in his hometown of Windsor. With the help of Sean Galbraith (one of the magazine’s contributors), we compared the relative sizes of those auto plants to Toronto’s downtown grid. We quickly discovered that some of the plants could cover nearly the same area.<\/p>\n

So when I passed through the gigantic highway interchange of highways 401 and 427 I thought I’d try a similar exercise. The interchange stretches 2-kilometres wide from Renforth in the west to the on-ramp at Eglinton and the 427 in the east. It is a tanlge of on- and off-ramps as it wraps around the industrial lands of the Molson brewery and Pearson International Airport. The highway gets really wide at this point, roughly 250 metres.<\/p>\n

A quick glance of a map of Toronto brings up numerous things to compare the interchange to, but I chose Mount Pleasant Cemetery because it seemed quite similar in orientation and and width (the distance between Yonge and Bayview is 2-kilmotres). Below is a an simple animation overlaying the two maps, going back and forth for comparison.<\/p>\n

\"highway<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Probably a little more revealing is switching between satellite images of the two areas. While the occupy a similar amount of space, the lack of quality green space in the interchange is startling .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I also did two other comparions: the 401-Allen Expressway interchange vs. Queen’s Park and the surrounding University of Toronto land (above); and the 401-404-DVP interchange vs. the area around the SkyDome and CN Tower (animated below).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months ago, Spacing senior editor Shawn Micallef wrote about the size of the auto factories in his hometown of Windsor. With the help of Sean Galbraith (one of the magazine’s contributors), we compared the relative sizes of those auto plants to Toronto’s downtown grid. We quickly discovered that some of the plants couldContinue reading “Highway interchanges vs. the urban city”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,9],"tags":[147,686,13924,2053,13923,3333,3436,6238,316,1629,1200,11466,310,569,19,270,853],"class_list":["post-8402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infrastructure","category-traffic","tag-animation","tag-cn-tower","tag-dvp-interchange-vs","tag-molson","tag-molson-brewery","tag-mount-pleasant-cemetery","tag-pearson","tag-pearson-international-airport","tag-queen","tag-satellite-images","tag-sean-galbraith","tag-senior-editor","tag-shawn-micallef","tag-skydome","tag-toronto","tag-university-of-toronto","tag-windsor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHighway interchanges vs. the urban city - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/12\/20\/highway-interchanges-vs-the-urban-city\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Highway interchanges vs. the urban city - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few months ago, Spacing senior editor Shawn Micallef wrote about the size of the auto factories in his hometown of Windsor. 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