A love letter to Richmond Hill, where I’ve lived for 20 years.
Inspired by A Love Letter to Suburbia by Diane Alisa (available at the RHPL’s hoopla service)
Dear Richmond Hill,
I heard whispers of your beauty long before I ever moved here. People spoke of your serene natural parks, your quiet ravines, your hidden streams that carve through neighbourhoods like gentle signatures of nature. They spoke of your landmarks—your gardens, your rolling hills, your shimmering lake—long before I ever saw them with my own eyes.
And when I finally arrived, I found something even more valuable: people of every background, every race, every story living together in peace. Families taking their kids for skating lessons in community centres. Neighbours chatting outside libraries. Streets that feel free of crime. Nights that feel calm. A sense of belonging that many cities can only dream of.
Richmond Hill, you are beautiful.
But my dear Richmond Hill, love also means honesty.
There are things you could do better—things you must do better if you want your beauty to last.
Your streets are lined with wide roads, huge parking lots, and endless big box stores. Most restaurants are chains that exist in every suburb from here to Vancouver, and the few small businesses that remain struggle to survive. It gives everyday experiences here a feeling that’s—well—manufactured. Not unique. Not yours.
You send people to work in Toronto. You send them to Toronto for entertainment, events, culture, nightlife—because here, many have to drive everywhere. And when getting around on foot is almost impossible, local businesses simply can’t thrive. That’s why so many young people end up with no options besides retail jobs for the same big-box giants that dominate your intersections.
This isn’t your fault alone—it’s the outcome of a suburban development pattern that worked half a century ago but is breaking now. Yet sometimes, when I talk to your residents, I feel like you’re still stuck in the 1960s, believing that more roads, more parking, more chains, more sprawl will somehow lead to prosperity.
But Richmond Hill… if you don’t wake up, it may be too late.
Cities go broke following the outdated pattern of endless suburban expansion. Those enormous parking lots waste the precious land you could use for homes, markets, parks, main streets, gathering places. And as housing affordability slips further away, the rise in homelessness is not accidental—it is a direct consequence of a pattern that prioritizes cars and parking over people and community.
And let’s be honest: no couple dreams of taking their wedding photos in front of a parking lot.
You are beautiful, Richmond Hill. But not because of those parking lots, or those wide roads, or those big stores with the same names found everywhere else.
You are beautiful because of your people. Your nature. Your potential.
Imagine what you could be if you embraced small businesses again. If you built walkable streets and welcoming squares. If people could live, work, shop, and enjoy life here instead of being pushed into traffic heading south every morning and north every evening. Imagine if your youth had more opportunities. If your economy was built on human-scale places instead of asphalt and chain stores.
Please wake up, Richmond Hill.
I’m writing not to criticize you, but because I love you—and because you deserve a future that reflects your true beauty.
With affection and hope,
Saeed V.
A Resident Who Believes in You