To give you an idea of how bright and garish Yonge-Dundas square has become in recent years, it's essentially the first and brightest thing you see when you start approaching downtown Toronto on a Porter flight. It's ridiculous. It now eclipses the CN Tower/Skydome/Fairmont Royal York as the most noticeable juggernaut when looking down on the city from the sky.
Pegged as being "Toronto's Times Square" (do we really need more comparisons to NYC, guys? Start making a few more places 24/7 and then we'll talk), the city has been trying to pimp out and jazz up Yonge-Dundas for years as the ultimate shopping/meeting/hangout destination.
I don't know about you, but I've never asked someone to meet me at Yonge-Dundas Square. In fact, I kinda avoid it the same way I do Moss Park or fauxbos on Queen Street. It's just that gaudy.
They have the 'all cross' now at Yonge-Dundas so that pedestrians can cross the street diagonally instead of once each way. People seem to use it but even at the busiest of times it's nothing like the East Asian cities that started it.
Sometimes on the terrace there are jugglers, buskers, magicians and the like doing performances.