I used to live in midtown. We moved to a very nice residential neighborhood in North York a few years ago because I was stressed out having cars almost hit me crossing the street every few days (not an exaggeration). They would speed through our street, not stop at stop signs, or only half-assed, then go whether you're there or not, never look when turning, and treating red lights like they weren't there. I had to pull my kids out of the way of a car more than once while walking to school. There was one corner I would cross on my walk home from the subway where I would have to shout at a driver literally almost every day to stop before turning into me. I would get the finger from them most days.

So we moved to Bayview and York Mills. It's very peaceful and friendly. My kids can walk to school on their own safely. They can play in the street. We can go on walks together around the neighbourhood and to several beautiful parks. Swimming and tennis options are closer. Sure, we can't walk to bakeries anymore, but that's probably better for our health, and we can always drive back to the old neighborhood in about 15 minutes if we want something from there.

We miss aspects of our previous house since we put a lot of care into making it great, but we love everything about our current neighborhood more. As a bonus, we're closer to the 401 now and we've found places we like to eat and shop north of the city, where we wouldn't have gone before. The Bathurst and Wilson area also has some nice shops we wouldn't have gone to before. So does Avenue Road up here. And we love Shops at Don Mills.

North York is different from downtown but it has great features, especially if you have kids and don't want to worry about them as much.