The Greater Toronto Area does not consist solely of the city of Toronto. There are something like 20+ municipalities in the area. I personally live in Oakville, and I love it here. No recent crazy scandals that I can remember, crime is pretty rare… Some of the housing prices have gone through the roof in recent years (though, compared to downtown Toronto it’s not too shabby, and let’s not even talk about, say, Vancouver’s housing market right now). And if you aren’t a car person, you really do have to move to Toronto. Anywhere outside of downtown (well, and even in downtown, if we’re being honest, considering Toronto is now the fourth largest city in North America) the transit systems are pretty dismal.
Although, having said all that, even Toronto itself is not really a single city, as the flavours of each part of the city are VERY different. And really, you can classify most big cities that way. Rob Ford doesn’t represent all Torontonians, in the same way that Michael Bloomberg (or Rudy Giuliani, before him) doesn’t represent all New Yorkers. Toronto in particular suffers in this respect because many parts of it (Etobicoke and Scarborough, for example) are MUCH more suburban than downtown itself. But we need not get into the pains of amalgamation here.
