West Queen West named one of the 15 coolest streets in North America

Jun 28 2016, 3:09 am

Global real estate services powerhouse Cushman & Wakefield has just released their first ever Cool Streets of North America report.

Now, ‘cool’ is – and always been – a problem.

Something, in fact, that Cushman & Wakefield address right off the bat:

WHAT IS COOL?

This is a question that clearly has no objective answer — ask 100 people to define what they think is cool and you are likely to get 100 different answers. What people define as cool is clearly a matter of subjective personal taste, and even if you could define it, it would only be for a moment in time because cool is a moving target. For economists or real estate analysts who usually strive to work in the realm of numbers and hard data, answering the question “what is cool?” almost seems frivolous. Except that it is not.

In fact, for retail the stakes couldn’t be higher. Ignore cool at your own peril.

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So basically, ‘cool’ in this case means where our generation (yes, millennials) want to be. Cushman & Wakefield spends several pages talking about what makes these neighbourhoods cool (Cool Streets serve as an incubator of sorts for what will likely be the hottest new retail concepts of tomorrow) and ultimately end up with “Cool Street = Millennial Street”.

Whatever, we’ll take it.

When it came time to breakdown West Queen West, this is what they came up with:

Queen West Cool

Cushman & Wakefield/Cool Streets of North America

Queen West Cool

Cushman & Wakefield/Cool Streets of North America

West Queen West didn’t hog all of Toronto’s glory though, two other neighbourhoods streets snuck into the 100 coolest in North America. Using their report methodology:

West Queen West Cool

Cushman & Wakefield/Cool Streets of North America

Cushman & Wakefield included both the Distillery and Kensington with these reports:

Coolest Streets

Cushman & Wakefield/Cool Streets of North America

Coolest Streets

Cushman & Wakefield/Cool Streets of North America

But if you live in Toronto, you know that these three neighbourhoods are just the tip of the cool iceberg. Tell us on our Facebook page what your favourite neighbourhood is and we just might create our own scale to prove you right!

Eric WainwrightEric Wainwright

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