dk man, you go on Google Maps and it says "Forest Hill" in big bold letters. In fact, of all neighbourhoods in Toronto, I feel like Forest Hill is one of the more well known neighbourhoods for various reasons.
Forest Hill is one of the better known ones, along with the Annex. But for every such neighbourhood that is well known, there are mountains of neighbourhoods that are obscure, to say nothing of the fact that which area belongs to which neighbourhood appears to be highly flexible and subject to interpretation.
For example, if we go by Google Maps, Eglinton-Scarlett is situated in an area called Westmount, Islington and Royal York form the boundaries of Royal York Gardens to the north of Eglinton. Islington and Kipling form Richmond Gardens to the north, but this is also overlapped by an area called Willowridge-Martin Grove-Ridgeview, which encapsulates, also, Richmond Gardens and Royal York Gardens. Conversely, Scarlett, Royal York, and Islington, with Eglinton as the north boundary, also belong to Edenbridge-Humber Valley, while the area along Kipling is also known as Princess-Rosethorn and Princess Anne Manor. And many of the neighbourhoods that are shown on Google Maps are contrary to the city of Toronto's official neighbourhood database, too.
Is this really useful to wayfinding? Surely this would cause much more confusion than Eglinton-Islington, Eglinton-Kipling, etc. Neighbourhood names only work when the places are well known, especially if the idea with this is catering to out of towners. If a person shows up at Dundas Station thinking it's going to be Dundas West, well, that sucks, but at some point the idea of personal responsibility has to kick in, especially in the age of apps which can guide you step by step through the entire process of travelling.
Or what about circumstances where two stations are in the same neighbourhood? Mount Dennis station is in Mount Dennis, but so is the future Jane-Eglinton (Eglinton Flats can't be, because it runs afoul of the same trouble that Dundas and Dundas West co-existing do). Every neighbourhood I mentioned in my above paragraphs also encapsulates at least two major concession roads as well. Which one gets priority for the neighbourhood name?
I agree that place names should not be aritificially contrived - but there is lot of room for grey here. Transit place names should have relevance to the districts, communities (and their heritage) of the city and not simply be a technocratic grid... otherwise, we might as well just give them gps or map coordinates.
Certainly, past communities that had "official" municipal status deserve recognition and can be meaningful - Mount Dennis, Fairbank, Forest Hill, Swansea, Leaside, Weston, were actual municipalities with councils and post offices and fire brigades. There is value in keeping that heritage alive, and integrating transit names with community is good for the promotion of the city generally. Other points that had distinct identity or longterm use as a landmark (Cedarvale, Donlands, Six Points, Thistletown come to mind) may also merit retention. This will be subjective, as not everybody remembers or knows every bit of city history or was present when that name was used for a place. (Sometimes, where a place or a bit of history has crept into the naming of roads, there's a convenient convergence.)
We need to show much more respect for the original indigenous place names, as well. Transit should not exclude itself from this.
(My grandparents used to refer to a particular place as "The Village" because when they built their house in the 1930s, it was indeed a village with the surrounding area being countryside. Everyone in my family still uses that term, whereas most current day Torontonians would offer a blank stare if it were used. How many people know why we have Downsview? Runnymede? Scarlett Heights?....aviators will likely still think of Humber Bay as "Whiskey Point", because there was once a collection of large buildings forming a distillery that were used as a visual reference for one of the Pearson flight paths )
Longevity is not the only thing. Science Center has turned out to be unfortunate (well, scandalous, but that's not a transit issue). Hakimi is regrettable, but if someone proposed renaming NYCC as "Rush Commons" or "Lee-Leifson Corners", I would be delighted.
It's subjective, but that's OK.
Kip District remains a trigger. Ugh.
- Paul
I am one of the most historically inclined people on the forum - in fact, I'm not at all a modernist or promoter of the future - and I'm all for reminding people of the past as much as possible, but in the case of station names I really don't see that it is at all helpful. Station names are supposed to give you quick information about where you are, and any name that is not current, likely only to be remembered by old folks reminiscing, or history nerds poring over old maps, run contrary to that. Otherwise you might as well rename Dundas Station to Crookshank, and St. Patrick to Anderson.
