JT's post above reminds me of something an old film producer in Hollywood said, sometime in the early seventies. He'd just made a pretty good picture for about a million dollars (at a time when the costs of making quality pictures was inching up to around 4-5 million). Someone asked him why there weren't more million dollar pictures being made, and he said "'Cause you can't steal a million dollars from a million dollar picture".
More seriously, my experience is the same as Kerry's; yes, Toronto has an abundance of high end public courses - some are well designed. Those are my choices. It makes it difficult to play as often as I'd like. I'm assuming I'm not alone in that.
If I were an architect, I too would want to work on the best pieces of land (for golf) as I could. I understand that. But, how many of these great pieces of land are left in North America? I mean, Bandon and Sand Hills are obviously wonderful, and there'll always be enough people willing and able to trek out there to make them viable businesses. But in the major urban areas across North America, is there any of this 'great land' left? And if so, wouldn't it be so expensive as to make anything but a very exclusive private or very high end public course impossible?
Might not everyone (in major urban areas) have to change their expectations a little? I mean, perhaps Tom D. might have to start working (and hopefully working magic) on rather banal pieces of land, and maybe I'll have to start expecting to pay more even for courses built on such land.
Peter