TorontoLiving
The Junction · Neighbourhood profile
Prohibition arrived by local referendum and didn't leave until 1997, which makes the stretch of Dundas West between Keele and Runnymede one of the few places in Toronto whose commercial character was shaped by what wasn't allowed. The consequence is a main street with an unusual density of furniture dealers, auto shops and church halls — and, since the licences came, a bar scene that still behaves like it's testing the rules.
We walked it for a week. Who's been there thirty years, who arrived in the last three, what the rent looks like on both sides of the rail corridor, and why the neighbourhood can't agree on where it ends.
Wireframe stands in for photography — final art direction pending
Parkdale
2h ago
Scarborough
4h ago
North York
6h ago
East End
Yesterday
Every neighbourhood in the city, in one place, whether we've written about it yet or not. A profiled entry links to the piece. An unprofiled one still carries the transit, the typical detached price and the district — because the gap in our coverage shouldn't be a gap in your information.
Victorian semis, U of T overflow, and the city's densest concentration of people who will tell you about Jane Jacobs unprompted.
The largest continuous stretch of Victorian housing in North America, and a conservation district that means it stays that way.
The stroller-and-espresso stretch of Queen East. Gentrified early, stabilised, now quietly one of the harder places to buy into.
Polish delis, High Park at the end of the street, and a main-street rebuild people still discuss like a war.
Dry for 93 years. Furniture showrooms, rail yards, and the fastest-changing commercial strip west of Ossington.
Pedestrian Sundays, a permanent argument about chain stores, and rental stock that has resisted every attempt to modernise it.
A planned garden suburb from 1913 that became a school-district destination. Quiet, expensive, hard to get into mid-year.
More restaurant seats per block than anywhere in the city, and a residential grid behind it that barely turns over.
Lakeshore condo towers in front, 1940s bungalows behind, and a GO ride that beats most of Old Toronto downtown.
Yonge and Finch density, one of the country's largest Korean and Iranian commercial districts, and catchments people move cities for.
The Bluffs, the sculpture park, and a postwar street plan that feels closer to a small Ontario town than to Toronto.
St. Clair West's Italian stretch, now sharing the street with a Latin American commercial layer that arrived over fifteen years.
How the Index works — every entry is written by the newsroom and ranked by nothing. There is no featured placement, no promoted neighbourhood and no way for an agent, a developer or a BIA to buy a position in it. Prices are the typical detached sale over the trailing twelve months, not an average and not a listing price; transit is what actually stops there today, not what is funded. The Index is the one module on this page that will never carry a sponsor — the disclosure policy says so in writing.
Corso Italia
The Italian storefronts didn't leave — they stopped being the only thing on the block. We surveyed every signband between Dufferin and Lansdowne and asked who owns the buildings underneath.
Staff writer · 11 min
Guildwood
Guild Park's salvaged façades are the most photographed ruins in the city. The streets behind them are the live argument about what Scarborough's waterfront is for.
Contributor · 13 min
Willowdale
North York Centre was drawn in 1976 as a second downtown with a height cap. Almost nothing built since has respected it, and the residents mostly don't mind.
Staff writer · 12 min
Analysis
Toronto charges one rate across the whole city. What differs is assessment — and the two move in opposite directions more often than owners expect at reassessment.
Housing desk · 8 min
Renting
Completions caught up with demand in a handful of postal codes. Where it happened, by how much, and the reason it probably doesn't last past next spring.
Housing desk · 7 min
Sponsored feature · Your Series Name Here
This tile sits beside our own reporting on prices, rents and taxes — the row people read when they are actually deciding. A sponsored feature here, written to our editorial standard and clearly labelled, reaches them at the moment the question is live.
Browse by geography
Filter by district, price band, transit line or school catchment. Each pin opens the profile, the housing data, and anything else we've published about that pocket of the city.
Open the mapRecurring series · Sponsored feature
The Featured Story is a full-width, full-colour sponsored feature in the middle of the Neighborhoods section — a recurring series built around what your business knows best, told through real Toronto streets and the people on them. You bring the subject. We bring the editorial standard and an audience that reads to the end.
Clearly labelled, impossible to scroll past, and read by exactly the people who are weighing where to buy, where to rent and who to call when they get there.
Your photograph, your people, your story — produced to Toronto Living’s editorial standard.
Transit
Twenty-five stops, and almost none of the land around them is zoned for what a station implies.
Staff writer · 9 min
Zoning
Legal everywhere since 2023. Built in a much shorter list of places, and the pattern isn't the one council expected.
Housing desk · 10 min
Main streets
We counted every ground-floor unit from Bathurst to Gladstone. The average hides where the problem actually is.
Staff writer · 8 min
Waterfront
A river valley was built from scratch and Villiers Island came with it. The blocks on top are still an open question.
Contributor · 12 min
Every Thursday · Free
One neighbourhood, every Thursday. The profile, what it costs, and the three things locals told us that didn't make the piece. No sponsor reads in the body of the email.
One email a week. Unsubscribe any time. We don't sell your address.
Internal reference — not part of the live page
Five positions, all unsold: three display units and two sponsored placements. Every one of them is showing a house ad or a placeholder that sells the slot it occupies, so the page can go in front of a prospect as it stands.
The house ads are built in CSS at true IAB proportions, not as images. They scale exactly as real creative will, so nothing shifts on the page when a booking replaces one — and nothing needs re-cutting when a size changes.
Every placeholder links to #advertise. Point that anchor at the real Advertise With Us page when it exists, and the whole page becomes a working funnel.
Every section gets one module that exists nowhere else on the site and states the section’s editorial position without an editor’s letter. Neighborhoods has the Index.
It sits after the lead and the news strip, before the mid-scroll billboard, so a reader moving between sections meets each section’s argument at the same point on the page.
The Index carries no paid placement and never will: all 158 neighbourhoods, ranked by nothing, with the unprofiled entries still carrying transit, price and district. That commitment is stated inside the module rather than buried in a policy page. It is also the strongest thing on the page to sell around — the reason the billboard directly beneath it is worth what it is worth.
Leaderboard and footer banner — entry price, rotating, up to three advertisers each. The right first buy for a local business testing the title: a realtor, a brokerage, a mover, a renovator, a neighbourhood restaurant group.
Mid-scroll billboard — exclusive, no rotation, sits immediately after the Index where readers have slowed down. Sell on ownership rather than impressions; it suits a lead magnet, a market report, an open house or a launch.
Sponsored tile and Featured Story — not display inventory. These are produced features, written to the editorial standard, clearly labelled, and sold as a series rather than a single insertion. The series pipeline shown in each placeholder is the pitch: repeat visits, not one impression.
| Position | Unit | Status & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Header ad | 970 × 90 leaderboard | OPEN — rotating, up to three advertisers · house ads in all three frames · 320 × 50 companion on mobile |
| Lead | The Junction, dry until 1997 | Independent editorial · hero art is a wireframe standing in for photography |
| News strip | Four items, ink left rules | Independent · rhythm break, deliberately the only module without art |
| Signature | The Index | NEVER SOLD — carries no paid placement of any kind, stated in the module and in the disclosure policy |
| Row 02 | Recently profiled, three cards | Independent editorial |
| Mid-scroll ad | 970 × 250 billboard | OPEN — exclusive, never rotates · one advertiser owns the position outright |
| Row 03 | What it costs, third tile sponsored | OPEN — sponsored feature series · a sponsored tile never leads a row |
| Map | Full-width ink module | Independent · the Index’s companion, not a duplicate of it |
| Featured Story | Full-bleed sponsored hero | OPEN — the largest placement in the section · own it outright or share the rotation |
| Row 04 | What changed, four cards | Independent editorial |
| Newsletter | Ink capture block | The one asset the publication owns outright · no sponsor reads in the email body |
| Footer ad | 728 × 90 banner | OPEN — rotating, up to three advertisers · 320 × 50 companion on mobile |
Still open before this is real: housing figures, profile dates and neighbourhood counts are comp placeholders and need a pass from the housing desk with a source printed on the page. Photography is shown as directed wireframe art; the lead needs a commissioned shoot. The 320 × 50 mobile companions referenced in the ad notes have not been designed yet — at present the house units collapse to a mobile-height banner instead. Point #advertise at the real Advertise With Us page before this goes to a prospect.