Vaughan

Vaughan (2021 population 323,103) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located in the Regional Municipality of York, just north of Toronto. Vaughan was the fastest-growing municipality in Canada between 1996 and 2006 with its population increasing by 80.2% during this time period and having nearly doubled in population since 1991. It is the fifth-largest city in the Greater Toronto Area, and the 17th-largest city in Canada.

Communities and identity

The city is made up of nearly a dozen historic communities. Likely as a result of the municipality being established when it was still largely a rural area with scattered settlements, most residents (and even non-residents) identify more with the larger communities than they do with the city as a whole and have greatly expanded their areas, and the City officially designates five in the urban area as major communities, with all of the built-up areas of the city considered as being within one of them. This includes corporations such as Bell Canada, which uses the original community rate centres and lists them separately in the phone book, resulting in local calling areas being different throughout the city.

• Woodbridge: North/South - Major Mackenzie/Steeles, East/West - Hwy 400/Hwy 50
• Maple: North/South - King Vaughan Line/Rutherford, East/West - Bathurst/Hwy 400
• Thornhill: North/South - Hwys. 7 and 407 (Major Mackenzie for the area west of Bathurst)/Steeles, East/West - Yonge/Dufferin
• Concord: North/South - Rutherford/Steeles, East/West - Dufferin/Hwy 400
• Kleinburg: North/South - King Vaughan Line/Major Mackenzie, East/West - Hwy 400/Hwy 50

Vaughan Metropolitan Centre

The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre is a new 179 hectare (442 acre) central business district under development around the intersection of Highway 7 and Jane Street, at the site of the former hamlet of Edgeley.

When the Township of Vaughan officially became a town in 1971, it was made up four historic communities (Maple, Kleinburg, Thornhill, and Woodbridge) large enough to have their own village or town centres. Vaughan committed to building a new business and commercial core distinct from all of them. This commitment became policy in 1998 when Official Plan Amendment 500 called for the Vaughan Corporate Centre, as it was then branded, to become a focal point for business activity and major commercial development.

It is served by the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre subway station, which is the northwestern terminus of Line 1 Yonge–University of the Toronto subway system. It is also a major transit hub for York Region Transit (YRT), as well as Viva and Züm bus rapid transit services.