Toronto > Neighborhoods

Overview:

If you head straight into downtown Toronto and stand in the heart of it all—Yonge and Dundas—you won’t be disappointed. Streetcars, sports cars, limos, rent-a-wrecks, rollerblades, bicycles and skateboards will all pass you by. Beneath the curvaceous Eaton Centre and the blaring street ads, you’ll see an assortment of people: suits with their cell phones, trendy university students, body-pierced punks, crazy down-and-outs and casual up-and-comers. I dare you to even try to figure out where everyone comes from, because this city is so multicultural that many people can trace their roots back to two or three different countries. But even though Toronto has 4.6 million people with contrasting cultural and religious backgrounds, it has been ranked the safest large metropolitan area in North America (Places Rated Almanac). So downtown is a good place to be. However, if that’s all you see, then you will never experience what it is that draws most people to live in this city in the first place: its cultural neighborhoods.