How Toronto Lost Its Groove

This superbly researched article by John Lorinc takes you through Toronto's history and key decisions that have lead our once prosperous city -- that was once heading for greatness -- into the sludge of traffic gridlock, growing poverty ghettos and a massive structural deficit.

How Toronto Lost Its Groove - And why the rest of Canada should resist the temptation to cheer

It's an amazing read, but quite sobering. Some people would associate our journey with the growing pains of great cities like New York, London or Paris, but another option is available: Detroit.

What will it take to get back on the right track? What is the reality that we're facing? Discuss.

Great Article, read it last night.

The article raises to our attention the culture of "no" and "stinginess" that has existed in Toronto for over a hundred years. Much like the general Canadian mentality to take the safe route, to avoid expensive projects (whether its infrastructure, our nations security etc), Toronto has remained true to this philosophy.

Toronto has suffered at the hands of a variety of reasons such as; political unwillingness to pursue the kind of investment necessary to 'build' Toronto, financial resources critical to enabling us to pursue major projects is taken from us and not returned based on current taxation models, decisions made in the past by politicians interested in pursuing easy fixes and politically discrete solutions.

I think Toronto is over due for a 'political reformation' of sorts. It's about time that Torontonians recognize the disadvantages and problems we face and elect leaders who can push through the solutions this city needs. I try to encourage this dialogue among my peers all the time, and more often than not they are in total agreement that Toronto is scraping by instead of planning for the future. The sentiments are there, the political will and courage is not.

I think Lorinc is both correct and unduly pessimistic. I will expand on this when I have more time...

allabootmatt said:

I think Lorinc is both correct and unduly pessimistic. I will expand on this when I have more time...

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'Unduly' pessimistic? I think Lorinc is dead on... and whether we can nit-pick or not, doesn't mean we should. Let's leave the message here loud and simple or else risk falling into the pattern of inertia and navel-gazing that the city is so dangerously prone to...

... to which, nevermind occupying Bay Street the people of Toronto should be occupying NPS and Queen's Park, demanding investment and reform. People get the leadership they deserve and/or demand, and the time has come for the city to make its voice heard once and for all.

I think Lorinc's piece, while excellent, is an example of another long Toronto tradition: a navel-gazing conviction that our challenges are both unique and worse than everyone else's.

I illustrate this with a simple question: among cities of roughly similar size and situation, who would you trade problems with if you could? Chicago? You'd gain a budget crisis of equal severity, widespread, intractable urban poverty and crime on a scale unknown anywhere in Canada, and a transit system that, while starting from a larger base of fixed infrastructure, is basically paralyzed when it comes to significant expansion. You'd gain a nicer downtown and waterfront.

I don't want to run through a long list of cities here, but my point is this: all large cities in North America face structural challenges. If Toronto's are worse, that's because of our own success at attracting immigrants on mass scale--a wonderful thing that inevitable strains the physical and social infrastructure. At the same time, the number of good things happening, even under our current complacent and/or incompetent civic leadership, is impressive (and, I wager, competitive with any of our peer cities).

None of this is to say our problems aren't significant and in need of urgent solutions. Just that holding up Toronto as some kind of paragon of urban dysfunction is simply wrong. By virtually any measure it's an extremely successful city.

What Toronto needs is a charismatic leader who knows all this and can drive a crowd, an entire city to dream big. David Miller had the right intentions and the knowledge to get it done but lacked the charisma to sell it. We need a leader with all 3.

allabootmatt said:

I think Lorinc's piece, while excellent, is an example of another long Toronto tradition: a navel-gazing conviction that our challenges are both unique and worse than everyone else's.

I illustrate this with a simple question: among cities of roughly similar size and situation, who would you trade problems with if you could? Chicago? You'd gain a budget crisis of equal severity, widespread, intractable urban poverty and crime on a scale unknown anywhere in Canada, and a transit system that, while starting from a larger base of fixed infrastructure, is basically paralyzed when it comes to significant expansion. You'd gain a nicer downtown and waterfront.

I don't want to run through a long list of cities here, but my point is this: all large cities in North America face structural challenges. If Toronto's are worse, that's because of our own success at attracting immigrants on mass scale--a wonderful thing that inevitable strains the physical and social infrastructure. At the same time, the number of good things happening, even under our current complacent and/or incompetent civic leadership, is impressive (and, I wager, competitive with any of our peer cities).

None of this is to say our problems aren't significant and in need of urgent solutions. Just that holding up Toronto as some kind of paragon of urban dysfunction is simply wrong. By virtually any measure it's an extremely successful city.

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Well if you're right, so what? What does your stance accomplish?? You acknowledge that there is truth in the article. You acknowledge there are structural problems, and that there are serious consequences. Why drift along a whole 'it's just as bad elsewhere' tangent when to do so is completely nonconstructive?

An interesting article but I almost wish that Lorinc had concentrated on one piece of the puzzle at a time.

I'm sort of tempted to start up an "Occupy NPS" thing that specifically involves protesting our own city hall to make it loud and clear how badly we want better transit, services, and infrastructure in this city.

SP!RE said:

I'm sort of tempted to start up an "Occupy NPS" thing that specifically involves protesting our own city hall to make it loud and clear how badly we want better transit, services, and infrastructure in this city.

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Start it. There'll at least be 2 of us.

Well I'm not so sure about all this ...

So a big complaint is the public realm, sure I agree, but is it really public spending that was missing ?

We've had so much in the way development throughout the downtown core, more then just about any city in North America. But with all this a lot will argue that these building have brought little to the public realm, less the new residents themselves.

The Vancouver series on the main page here was rather interesting, it seems that, at least to some degree, their projects contributed more in terms of parks / fountains / ... Maybe it was only a small sampling ?

Transportation, clearly I can't argue with that, and it's clearly public spending that's lacking here. Or maybe, to word it more appropriately, a lack of public spending combined with the ever fluctuation political winds that blow in the whatever direction best suites the current administrations short term goals.

In terms of large scale projects, we have / had the waterfront, that's been on-going for the last 15+ years and has involved a lot of spending on all parts. Sure we haven't seen the results yet, but looking forward, I think the article fails to recognize how large of a development this really easy (granted, it hasn't really taken off yet).

So other then transportation, what would you change ?

Tewder said:

Well if you're right, so what? What does your stance accomplish?? You acknowledge that there is truth in the article. You acknowledge there are structural problems, and that there are serious consequences. Why drift along a whole 'it's just as bad elsewhere' tangent when to do so is completely nonconstructive?

Click to expand...

I dunno, I think a sort of 'woe is us, it's all beyond repair' attitude, as evidenced in the title of that 'Will Toronto Ever be Beautiful' talk, is equally non-constructive. There are significant and urgent problems in TO, but they are mostly addressable. And refusing to recognize and build upon our strengths and successes doesn't help us get a grip on them, either.

I guess on the whole it's just that this Toronto-in-decline narrative gets my back up. Doesn't mean that for one second I won't support efforts to improve things.

"The Three Cities within Toronto contained this dark warning: if current trends continue, by 2025 Toronto’s shrinking middle class will have almost completely decamped to the 905 suburbs and beyond. In this bleak scenario, Canada’s largest city will have morphed into a polarized urban landscape where poor suburbs surround a prosperous downtown and wealthy midtown enclaves"

maybe if this trend continues the people in the outer suburbs will be so poor the majority wont be able to afford to drive... If thats the case WHO would oppose LRT ROW???? I guess the people from richmond hill markham and vaughn who kindly use our streets to get home.. Well at least they wont get a vote...

"How Toronto Lost Its Groove" is well researched, and well written, by a guy who clearly knows the issues.

I think this city should take it as a challenge. "Toronto, meet yourself".

In my opinion, the entire issue is summed up in Lorinc's "who's in charge (answer: no one)".

Just to drive my point home -- if anyone were to assert that Torontonians actually want their public spaces looking shabby, or think it's fine that a transit trip from Carlton/Parliament to Queen/Spadina should take more than 1 hour at rush hour time, then I would seriously take issue. It's not the way we want things. But somehow, that's the way things are. There have been attempts in the past by certain politicians to take charge and solve some issues, but to this point in time, the rest of the political machinery has killed off some fairly valiant efforts. (I can't count the number of subway proposals I've seen die, during my lifetime).

Those of you who are calling for a good leader are correct. Lorinc has suggested that greatness could be just around the corner for Toronto, but I am still finding it hard to fathom that the electors in the outer ring of this city put a ridiculous penny-pincher in the mayor's chair. That alone is fairly depressing. The concept of "value for dollars spent" appears to evade Mayor Ford. The leader that I am hoping for is going to need special talents, a great deal of passion, and endless energy. Lorinc has noted that the enemy is both outside and within, and that is quite correct. Provincial "leaders" like Harris have been disastrous to Toronto. But the "leaders" within who are just too willing to lay down and die are equally disastrous.

The problem has always been that no one is realizing what is at stake .... leaders, for heaven's sake, are supposed to keep their eyes on the prize.

I've always been optimistic that we'll turn a corner and recognize that we have the world in the palm of our hands if only we get proactive about it. The trick is to unlock and unleash the enormous energy that we have in Toronto. I think that takes a special person, and in other cities around the world that has often been the case -- one pivotal person. We haven't had our great leader yet. At the same time, we can reflect on the Rob Ford disaster. That alone may prove the turning point; the city at large may finally understand the issues, and what is at stake, and elect an bona fide leader next time around.

If as the author suggests, that many of the city's problems have their roots in how the province has dealt with the city over the past decades, is it too late to reverse the damage? Would it be beneficial to de-amalgamate the City of Toronto and form a much larger Metro area including all the GTA municipalities, or would the pains of doing so outweigh the benefits?