That said, I drive this mess everyday and my 25 min cross town commute makes Torontonians cry. I don’t bike or bus though, so I do ultimately agree with him.
Regarding downtown. You won’t find more information on that shack thing because it’s not real. Besides a couple historic floods and fires I can’t think of what he means.
It's not just bike and transit unfriendly, it's bad for cars too. There's no easy way to get from one side to the other in less than an hour during the day, short of taking a helicopter.
Compare London to nearby Kitchener/Waterloo. They essentially have a ring road (hwy 85), PLUS a light rail + bus rapid transit system. It's still absolutely full of stroads, but at least it's more accessible and things actually move around.
In London, Oxford is essentially a 10 KM long parking lot every day at 9 AM, and Adelaide spends about two hours a day blocked by freight trains. Every attempt to fix the city frankly makes it worse. I don't know if it's because of poor planning, inept council, the lack of geographical constraints, or some other factor, but this city is the absolute show piece for failed urban design.
So yeah, I think it's completely reasonable to lean into London ON, it's the perfect case study in bad north american cities.
Does anyone have more details on this in written form? It's annoyingly difficult to google for because it's the other London.
Various British cities have been guilty of this; Bradford had a "hole" for about a decade due to an unbuilt shopping centre. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2009/08/27/b...