Toronto: capital of cool. Or, you know, whatever.

I’ve been in Toronto for less than 36 hours and I think I’m a little bit in love. My only previous reference point for the city being the film Scott Pilgrim vs The World (based on a comic book about a slacker wannabe musician fighting his girlfriend’s evil exes), I had high hopes for Toronto being a laid-back centre for alternative culture. And so far I haven’t been disappointed.

Toronto is a lot of the things people told me it would be: cosmopolitan, clean, friendly, safe-feeling. It's architecture is impressive in places, with neo-Gothic cathedrals, period North American townhouses and gleaming skyscrapers often sat side by side. And I had some expectations of seeing a cultural output that, if not on the level of London or New York, would make it a very attractive place to spend time. But I never thought it would be this, well, cool.

It’s very much a young person’s city: around half the people I’ve passed in the street seem to have been under 35. And a lot of them look like they could be musicians, artists or maybe just book lovers. What’s really great, though, is that Toronto’s youth don’t all seem to be trying too hard. They might have Topshop and Urban Outfitters like London but there are far fewer pairs of skinny jeans, red chinos or ironic moustaches. They aren’t there to be seen; they’re just there to enjoy themselves.

High street stores sit happily next to quirky independents.

The other thing is that culture, and alternative culture in particular, seems much more integrated into the city. High street chain stores and even a few designer shops sit happily alongside the quirky independents. Instead of being largely contained to specific enclaves, Toronto’s record shops, booksellers and clothes boutiques seem to be found throughout the neighbourhoods of the city’s centre.

They’re not exclusive or expensive haunts set on side streets away from the mainstream consumers, like Soho and Carnaby Street to London’s Oxford Street. They’re not there for tourists like in Camden or rich people like in Notting Hill. They’re a vital part of the city’s regular inhabitants lives.

Every area seems to have its own theatre and park, and book stores are places where people come to hang out as if they were bars. Starbucks isn’t the only coffee shop but KFC is the only fried chicken place, as a multitude of other restaurants, cafes and takeaways fill the spaces.

Even the books in Toronto are so cool they don't have plotlines.

There’s an absence of off-licences but there are specialist beer shops. And unlike many UK shopping strips, where the big chains haven’t taken over, what remains isn’t casinos, money lenders and charity shops but local supermarkets and affordable furniture outlets. Even the bargain basement is jazzed up as a low-price ‘department store’ and actually sits above a magnificently huge independent record shop of the size and prominence you don’t see in London at all any more.

The city is proud enough of its gay village to give the road signs there rainbow flags and big mentions in the tourist guide, while sex shops that appear more cheeky than seedy yet without an Ann Summers gloss are positioned comfortably between more traditionally respectable establishments.

This social integration and cohesion isn’t everywhere, of course. High-rise blocks of expensive-looking condominiums sit outside these areas, while high-end shopping malls are nestled within a financial district where at least one of the skyscrapers is literally made of gold (gold dust in the windows at least). Starkly contrasted against this are the tramps who lie on the vents in the middle of the pavement for warmth, forcing the rest society to step around them. And yet you feel there isn’t the same level of ostentatious greed and inequality you get in London.

It's not the streets that are paved with gold but the buildings.

My snapshot day and a half in Toronto has of course been skewed by my choice of places to visit. Perhaps my longing for a Scott Pilgrim-world of cool but unpretentious twenty-somethings going to gigs, hanging out in comic book stores and working in vegetarian restaurants has led me to overlook the more mundane aspects of the city. But I’ve never had such a pleasant feeling from just wandering round somewhere for day or found it so easy to come across so many interesting yet relaxed venues. It’s a well-learned lesson in not trying too hard.