News   Mar 28, 2024
 1.3K     3 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 643     2 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 921     0 

Toronto falling from grace? Yeah, right. Canada's No. 1 city is soaring

M II A II R II K

Senior Member
Member Bio
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
3,944
Reaction score
1,061
Toronto falling from grace? Yeah, right. Canada's No. 1 city is soaring


Feb 22, 2013

By Trevor Melanson

Read More: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/eco...race-yeah-right-canadas-no-1-city-is-soaring/


In a keynote address at the Toronto Region Board of Trade last week, Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak pitched Toronto as a city "falling farther behind." Receding, he said, "from its rightful place as a leader in North America." The notion that Toronto is falling from grace, perhaps much like Montreal did in the seventies, even found its way into the prestigious pages of The Economist.

- Sure, the complaints about Canada's biggest city are mostly valid. City Hall is a mess. Our transit is overburdened. And our unemployment should be lower. But the notion that Toronto is somehow any less great than it used to be isn't just wrong, it's outrageous. The truth is, in spite of its problems, Toronto is booming like never before. And it's not getting the credit it deserves. First of all, no city in the Western Hemisphere is putting up more high-rises than Toronto.

- Ontario's capital also continues to be the most popular city with immigrants by a large margin. And even despite its already great size, Toronto remains one of Canada's fastest growing cities. Between 2006 and 2011, Toronto grew 9.2% to 5.6 million people. Compare that with Calgary, No. 1 at 12.6%, but for only 1.2 million. In other words, in sheer numbers, nobody is growing more than Toronto. Certainly, nobody is catching up.

- But it's not just growth, development and an increasingly spiffy skyline marking Toronto's success. Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers ranked Toronto 3rd after New York and London on its Cities of Opportunity list. Meanwhile, KPMG said Toronto is the second most business competitive city in the world, up from 6th in 2010. And in April, Startup Genome claimed Toronto is the 4th best tech startup hub, again, in the world.

- Then there are our banks, spreading more and more internationally. While Scotiabank grows in Latin America and China, TD has seen success in the highly competitive U.S. market. That's good news for Canada, but even better for Toronto, where they're headquartered. So it's no wonder The Big Smoke has seen a boom in luxury hotels in recent years.

- Not just economically, but culturally too. Indeed, according to Time magazine, the Toronto International Film Festival is now "the most influential film festival, period." Which is why last year Soho House premiered its latest locale in Toronto. The celebrity-frequented private club, with branches in London, New York, Berlin, Miami and Hollywood, opened alongside TIFF in September. All of which is to say, Toronto is not a sinking ship. In fact, it's sailing marvelously, often through rough water, sure, but that's true of every city.

.....




d0ee11164c2cbed15c6d5e07c757.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the post. It's funny just how much hate Toronto gets, especially from other jealous Canadian cities. Pretty much everyone else outside of Canada recognizes Toronto as a city that is quickly becoming one of the top international business destinations. I'm glad articles like this use factual information to point out the ridiculousness behind the "Toronto is crap" notion. I have to wonder what those people would say had Toronto shared Detroit's fate. "Toronto: a worse business destination than Bulawayo, Zimbabwe." Not too much of a stretch :)
 
Tim Hudak is a blustering, ignorant fool who uses watered down tea-party fear mongering to scare up votes from the poorly informed. If he does end up as Premier he may personally bring into reality his antic vision of a once thriving Toronto falling into steep decline.
 
Thanks for the post. It's funny just how much hate Toronto gets, especially from other jealous Canadian cities.

It's not just from outside of Toronto. There are quite a few people Torontonains who absolutely love to hate the city and have convinced themselves that Toronto is some kind of hell hole. Thankfully these kind of people are in the minority. Most realize that there are few places in the world that are better to call home than Toronto.
 
Tim Hudak is a blustering, ignorant fool who uses watered down tea-party fear mongering to scare up votes from the poorly informed. If he does end up as Premier he may personally bring into reality his antic vision of a once thriving Toronto falling into steep decline.

I hear you. Hudak scares me in so many ways!
 
It's not just from outside of Toronto. There are quite a few people Torontonains who absolutely love to hate the city and have convinced themselves that Toronto is some kind of hell hole. Thankfully these kind of people are in the minority. Most realize that there are few places in the world that are better to call home than Toronto.

Honestly, from my experience;

The media likes to play this feeling up and literary make you think all Torontonains hate Toronto ... but I find when you really start asking around, people don't feel that way at all ...
 
I personally feel that Toronto has it's challenges. But if we compare apples to apples and view the city in it's North American and Western context I can't see much to complain about by comparison. This is no excuse for complacency though, the challenges we face moving forward are real and concerning. I'm particularly concerned about the employment situation and our failure to more productively harness the human capital available to us. A pool of human capital of quality that is hard to match in other cities globally.
 
Exactly, this is all true, but people will believe what they want to believe. Ironically many of the "problems" Toronto faces now, like traffic/transit congestion, high real estate prices and construction mayhem are a result of the fact that Toronto continues to boom economically compared to so many other places. Plenty of crumbling American cities with hollowed-out cores would love to have these "problems." Many Canadians who hate on Toronto in fact seem to simply dislike big cities and intensification in general. As for Torontonians, there are some haters who are only here until they can save money and get out, but there are also many who love the city: what's sad is they are often hesitant to talk about that love out loud. What we need is a more open culture of Toronto-boosting!
 
^True. In a thread a while back in the Transportation forum forumers were discussing the merits and such of the LRT in downtown Buffalo. My argument was that if I was Mayor of Buffalo, forget transit or street-scaping (which of course are fine things) I would do anything to create a traffic jam. Bring on the congestion! If only downtown Buffalo had a problem like congestion! We are truly lucky to have a problem like congestion.
 
This might be interesting regarding all those cranes in the sky.......

From Former Mayor John Sewel

Massive condo growth destroying city budget

City council’s budget for growth related capital expenditures this year is $659 million; $811 million in 2013; and $568 million in 2014. Council imposes a development charge for each new unit of housing, but the total revenue from development charges is budgeted at just $91 million this year and smaller amounts for the following years. The shortfall in meeting the costs of growth is well over a half-billion dollars a year. And the property taxes collected from these new units is not expected to pay for the operating costs of the new facilities. All that growth is causing a major financial problem.
 
^Once again, ask any city in North America if they would mind having that kind of problem?

Some of the great cities of this continent have barely seen a crane on the horizon in the last 5 years. Half the cities in America are effectively bankrupted. I was in the Bay Area a few years ago. This is a region that is home to the greatest tech cluster in our part of the world. A much richer and developed area than Toronto. There were literally dudes with signs asking for work by the side of the highway. The commercial vacancy rate in Silicon valley was something like 27 pecent.

In Europe London, the star of the early 2000's has been decapitated as a financial centre and the British economy I believe is smaller now than 5 years ago.

I'm not saying this to gloat about Toronto. No, we have huge challenges ahead and we prosper if our peer city regions in North America and beyond prosper too. But if you look at the situtation realistically, Toronto could stagnate for the next decade and still have preformed well relative to it's peers in North America and Europe.
 
In Europe London, the star of the early 2000's has been decapitated as a financial centre and the British economy I believe is smaller now than 5 years ago.
Oh, that's tricky. It is smaller than 5 years ago, but it's bigger than it was 4 years ago, and has been generally increasing since then.
 

Back
Top