I dunno. To me, T.O. is a collection of neighbourhoods. You have to remember that Toronto did not start off as Toronto, but rather as a collection of small towns and villages that all grew and sort of blurred to merge together. So what you find, even to this day, is a series of "downtowns"
For example, the west end, which I am familiar with - way back you had places like "Mimico", "New Toronto", "Toronto West Junction", "Swansea", "Islington", Toronto West Junction, "Parkdale", etc. etc. etc. These areas all grew into each other. As a result, you get all kinds of neighbourhood places to hang out
For me, there are all kinds of interesting hoods with their own feels, their own restaurants, shops, focal points.
Toronto is very much an alive inner city, as opposed to so many American Cities, or even other Canadian cities. Living in the city is desireable and sought after real estate. I think looking at it, it was a result of having single family homes just off the main streets. Downtown T.O. is very much a mixed use of both residential, and commercial.
Though I agree that the tall boxes that people ooh and aahh over when it comes to a skyline are actually fucking disasters when it comes street scape - which is what people notice when they are on foot. When you see Toronto's skyline from a distance, it is impressive, however, when you're walking in many areas where they have built the tall boxes, it's depressing. What's even more depressing is when the developers start knocking down really interesting old buildings to put up another concrete and glass box. The concrete and glass boxes are a blight imho.