Isn't Toronto one of the most expensive cities to live in North America? If you are building large houses in a nice, walkable area, you can't fit enough people there to match demand, and so the cost of the housing spikes. The point is that you can pick 2: walkability, large houses, affordability.

* Walkability, large houses = very expensive neighborhoods and gentrification

* Large houses, affordable = rural areas where cars are required

* Affordable, walkable neighborhood = Tiny apartments/homes in an urban area

* A bit of the best/worst of all 3 = Suburbs

Those houses—actually the land that they're built on—are expensive nowadays because living in the urban city is cool again.

Up until ~2000 it was not so, because living in the city was for immigrants and all the WASPs moved into the innter/outer suburbs with their white picket fences. The area of the links is where the Poles concentrated; to the west were the Ukrainians; to the east is Little Portugal (then onto Chinatown); to the north-east is Little Italy. Toronto is a good example of what Jane Jacobs saying 'you don't live in a city, but in a neighbourhood':

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighbourhoods_in_Toro...

And the reason why Toronto (SW Ontario) is so expensive, especially since 2015, is because we've had so much immigration in the region, but housing hasn't kept up by pure volume (regardless of density or other factors).

Basically over the course of about 20 years, college educated twenty somethings decided they liked living in the city. When I graduated from grad school, aside from those working in Manhattan, almost none of my cohort moved to a city.

I guess for walkable as in literally able to walk somewhere that works.

But I was thinking about walkability from European perspective where it means you don't need to own a car (the places you've liked to look like every household has a car). When I lived in London on multiple occasions I've had jobs within 20 minute walk from where I lived.

> you don't need to own a car (the places you've liked to look like every household has a car).

I know people who are in the area that do not have a car, but the area has been gentrified over the last few years, so folks have cars 'just because why not' really.

Still generally applies per the label of streetcar suburbs. The area in question is just south of a subway line, and Roncesvalles has a streetcar line going through it to a station.