Regarding Trash: I have to respectfully disagree with birdonmyshoulder, I have been to several american cities and have seen more than my share of littered back streets and main streets--never to be cleaned in our decade (nor probably the next)--Toronto has more trash than the picturesque Vancouver, but squeaky clean compare to the average burbs in many mega city in the States.
Cultural make-up: The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) consist of long stretches of perfectly planned LA-like streets and unmolested bus stops--it also screams Boredom! I have only been to Mississauga and Scarborough but I can say that even if you live way out in GTA you'll enjoy a lot of multiculturalism. Go 30 km more and it's lilly white.
Character: I lived in Honolulu, Taipei, and Vancouver, before moving here. You get can pretty much all of the above (and 80 countries more) for $20 a day in Toronto.
Toronto is a very romantic city, it really fun and there are a lot of opportunities to share a good time with someone. My wife and I find all sorts of perfectly cute restaurants and we both feel at once compelled try yet another new eat-out or wishing we can go back to that old place. Most never have to eat at the same place twice!
I believe some canadians love Toronto partly because it's both the stereotypical american city on tv they love to hate and the familiar canadian small town they can't bear to part with. You have access to everything you could ever want to buy in a capitalistic society--OR-- forgo all that; bike around town; volunteer for green peace; be oblivious to the fast life; be perfectly content with self.
Like many northern cities, in Toronto you either drive or you join the Great Traffic Wait--for buses, trains, subway, etc. You can't go anywhere because they can't go anywhere. The snow, ice'd roads, narrow overly-crowded streets--slows everything in town. All this wait makes you want to spend a month in Tokyo, Boston, Singapore, Amsterdam or any where where life goes a lot faster--real bad. This is probably one of the reasons canucks fly abroad so much. This is probably one of the reasons why canadians are so well-connected on the last mile, it's about the only way to shop or get things done. As a result of this the internet is a very big part of canadian culture, whether you live out in the sticks or among the high-rises.
Future: I think the biggest short-coming of
Toronto is the fact that you can't rebuild central Toronto (it's not like Red China, where you can just move people out on the street to tear down a block and build something in its place), you are restricted to building those huge malls and fun movie theators OUT-THERE, and wait a decade or 2 for a highway extension to come your way. It's very frustrating to have to go 20 minutes ANYWHERE-BUT-HERE just to do some shopping.
Will these 2 story limits hold forever? No, give it 50 years, the building owners and their kids will cash in, the highs will rise, and we'll probably become NYC (in the latter part of the 20th century) cloned. Until then people from everywhere are flocking in and it's a good time.