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A Brief History of Urbanophobia

H

Hydrogen

Guest
An interesting article. I think it says a lot for the evident small-minded attitudes towards cities in this country - an attitude still in play with our federal government.
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A Brief History of Urbanophobia

The prejudice of city-hating seems to be deeper, more persistent and more poisonous to progress in Canada than anywhere else in the world. That’s going to spell trouble in a century experts say will be defined by cities
Nov 24, 2007 04:30 AM

DAVID OLIVE
BUSINESS COLUMNIST

This week brought another sample of the disdain leaders in senior levels of government have for cities.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities on Tuesday warned that close to 80 per cent of the nation’s urban infrastructure, including roads and bridges, water and waste-removal systems, and transit are past their service life. The tab for replacing it is a staggering $123 billion.

Yet pleas for help from the weakest level of government are almost always greeted by sophistry or condescension. This time the rebuffs came from the top tier of the federal government.

First up was Prime Minister Stephen Harper: He boasted of his government’s $33 billion infrastructure program, which actually goes to provinces, not cities, and in any case works out to a paltry annual $4.7 billion over seven years.

Next came Lawrence Cannon, Harper’s minister of transport and infrastructure, who passed the buck: “I call upon the cities to go and sit down with the provinces,†he said.

And finally Jim Flaherty reminded cities of their comparatively trifling place in the universe: “We’re not in the pothole business in the Government of Canada,†said Harper’s finance minister, adding that the cities should stop “whining.â€

North America is unique in its traditional denigration of cities.

The phenomenon is especially pronounced in Canada, where the urban centres, in which roughly 80 per cent of Canadians live — the country’s largest voting block — are powerless creatures of the provinces, with no constitutional standing and very limited spending powers, despite the massive downloading on to them in recent years of social-service and other responsibilities.

Almost wholly reliant for revenue on the property tax — one of the most regressive forms of taxation — municipalities are routinely depicted as feckless authors of their own misfortune whenever finding themselves staring into the fiscal abyss, even after, in Toronto’s case, accounting firm KPMG concluded in a study this year that the city is an able steward of its finances.

Toronto just lacks the money to do all that’s asked of it, a story that is repeated in scores of communities across the country.

“Many political leaders just don’t like cities,†says Richard Florida, the renowned U.S. urbanologist recently tapped to help launch the Prosperity Centre at Toronto’s Rotman School of Business. “They ofx ten think they can mobilize rural and suburban voters by running against cities.â€

It might be that Western civilization traces its roots to city-states like Athens and Florence.

But suspicion of cities is as old as the Scriptures, where the Christian regard of urban life begins in Genesis with God’s wrath in destroying Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah.

And in a New World that rejected much of the old, Henry David Thoreau despaired of the stress puppies in Boston and Philadelphia and retired to his Walden cabin far from “the desperate city.â€

Even Lewis Mumford, one of the greatest urbanologists of the 20th century, worried about forces of alienation at work in cities grown too large.

“Democracy, in any active sense,†Mumford said in the 1960s, “begins and ends in communities small enough for their members to meet face to face.â€

In the early days of modern neo-conservatism, prominent U.S. commentator George Gilder, appalled by the costly social-work burden cities had taken upon themselves beginning in the 1960s, described cities as “parasites,†ignoring the multitude of studies showing that national prosperity is tied to the rising affluence of urban dwellers.

More recently, the neo-conservative agenda has made room for an attack on progressive voters and U.S. cities teeming with Democrats.

“New Yorkers don’t really see themselves as part of the rest of America,†said American pundit Ann Coulter. “Americans understand that Manhattan is the Soviet Union.â€

On a more sorrowful note, Joe Clark acknowledged that the easiest way to unite Canadians is to invoke their hatred of Toronto.

It helps when a nation’s capital is also its principal city. That way, federal politicians and mandarins get a daily experience of failing transit systems, decrepit schools and abandoned factories in wait need of creative redevelopment.

Outside Canada, great cities are regarded as national treasures, the face that countries show the world. Principal cities like Rome, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, and even “sub-national†centres such as Shanghai, St. Petersburg and Edinburgh, are adequately funded by national governments.

Outside Canada, senior governments partner with cities in what are regarded as national projects.

Paris has funded a stunning makeover of the Charles de Gaulle airport in a successful bid to share European gateway status with Heathrow, Frankfurt and Amsterdam’s Schipol.

With Britain’s enthusiastic support, London is attempting to outmuscle New York as the world capital of finance.

Washington, whose ambivalence toward cities contrasts with Ottawa’s resolute disregard for them, financed Boston’s “Big Dig,†one of the largest U.S. urban-renewal megaprojects in American history.

And to help spur tourism in the gritty industrial city of Bilbao, Madrid footed much of the bill for Canadian expat Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao museum.

Outside Canada, cities have authority to collect local retail and income taxes, and they share in regional taxes. All that applies to U.S. cities, as well, which also have long been permitted to engage in debt-financing by issuing tax-free municipal bonds. Canadian cities, by contrast, are in a fiscal straitjacket, forbidden from running deficits, much less issuing and managing debt.

Yet Canadian cities have rarely been blessed with a confluence of conditions favourable to their future prospects — and to Canada’s.

The nation’s public finances are more sound than that of any G-8 country, enabling Canada to invest heavily in social as well as physical infrastructure to a degree not seen before.

Canadian cities consistently rank among the most liveable in the world. Canada’s receptivity to immigrants and America’s contrasting post-9/11 xenophobia is directing an unprecedented share of the world’s talent to Canada.

The strengthened loonie makes recruiting large numbers of leading scientists, academics, software engineers and corporate administrators away from strong-currency jurisdictions possible for the first time in decades.

These people want to live in cities. “Places that bring together diverse talent accelerate the local rate of economic development,†Florida writes on his blog (www.creativeclass.typepad.com).

“When large numbers of entrepreneurs, financiers, engineers, designers and other smart, creative people are constantly bumping into one another inside and outside of work, business ideas are more quickly formed, sharpened, executed, and — if successful —expanded.â€

Globalization and the information age are accentuating the importance of cities, Thomas Courchene, director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen’s University and one of Canada’s foremost public-policy experts, writes in a landmark June report for the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Global Futures for Canada’s Global Cities.

Courchene describes a “virtuous circle†by which global city regions can take “actions that make them attractive to human capital, which, in turn, allows them to become magnets for attracting knowledge-based industries.

“Evidence suggests that privileging Canada’s `hub cities’ will propel them and their hinterlands forward economically.â€

Yet Canadian cities are starved of the cash to fund such a renaissance.

“The international evidence on our global city regions’ fiscal weakness is striking,†Courchene warns.

“Cities like Stockholm, Berlin, Vienna and Helsinki spend twice as much and Copenhagen and Amsterdam three times as much per capita (on infrastructure, social services and cultural amenities) as Toronto does.

“This suggests that there is ample scope for decentralization in Canada to go beyond devolution of money and power from Ottawa to the provinces.â€

Bottom line: It’s time Canada’s communities were funded directly by Ottawa, which is projecting $26 billion in excess funds over the next six years.

Cities should also be given the capital-raising tools common to cities elsewhere in the world.

It would help immensely if mayors like Toronto’s David Miller had quasi-premier status, with complete control over the city bureaucracy and all-important budget that New York’s Michael Bloomberg wields.

It would seem obvious that municipalities have unrivalled competence in understanding and dealing with the multitude of issues in their jurisdictions.

In the prolonged absence of visionary leadership from Ottawa or provincial capitals, “on urban planning, environment, transportation, education, refugee settlement, public health and many other policies the true innovators in Canada and the U.S. have been mayors,†says Florida.

It’s time to withhold political support from leaders who don’t grasp that urbanity will shape this century even more than the last one.

We have nothing to lose but elected representatives who take our votes for granted, impeding municipal and national progress and inviting our civic deterioration.
 
The anti-city attitudes of Canadians baffle me. Even my extended family who live in various places within an hour of Toronto have an almost universally negative opinion of the city. Justifications are a mix of odd stereotypes and inane opinions that vary according to convenience: either the city is full of rich snobs, of disconnected suits, murderous criminals, desperately poor immigrants, or some extreme variation thereof, depending on the topic at hand.

After over a century of glorifying rural life (which seems to always stand for wholesomeness and hard work and "honest living") and demonizing city life (which seems to always stand for dirty industrialization and greedy financial wheeler-dealers) the impressions no longer seem to be even remotely grounded in reality, yet they are not only persisting, they are growing stronger.

Meanwhile, city dwellers have nothing against the rural life: if anything, we are often envious of it. It's a one-way hatred, based on what appears to be nothing concrete.

It's also depressing to hear about other countries taking the lead, while we turn backwards.
 
Olive concentrates exclusively on the federal government, and concludes that the feds hate cities.

But the municipalities are the province's responsibility. The province was gung ho about taxing the penny per dollar, until that actually became possible. Suddenly McGuinty doesn't want to hear about it.

Olive is missing the point.
 
Disparishun:

Actually, so is health care and education - I don't see anyone clamoring to have the feds withdraw social services transfers though. In addition, it isn't like Flaherty "wanted" the tax room to go to cities - if he does, he wouldn't have been putting forth arguments like "we cut taxes, but look what "other levels of governments" do..." in the debate.

In addition to that, if Flaherty really is that into the whole municipalities are not our responsiblity arguments, it would not have provided selective funding for infrastructure projects as it deemed fit. You tell me why building a road out in rural Canada, which is quite frankly a provincial responsiblity under your argument, should be funded federally, with the photo ops and all that?

Besides, the whole point of the debate is not whether the city are the creatures of the provinces under the current constitutional arrangements - but whether cities, given the changes in Canadian demographics and economy, should be something that has a national policy focus. Clearly, it does.

AoD
 
Urbanophobia: a North American fear of sorts?

HG: Interesting article about a North American phobia of sorts: Urbanophobia!
I remember or have seen myself people from suburbs or rural areas having a distinct dislike to cities and their residents-the "City Slicker" resentment.

It amazes me that some suburbanites around major cities-NYC,Chicago and Philadelphia in the US as well as Toronto in Canada are the ones I am most familiar with-have distinct dislike or fear even of these cities. It is sometime even more pronounced in rural areas.
It surprises me that Canada has that type of phobia-Canadian cities as a whole are much better-and safer-environments as a whole to work and live in than many US cities.

Taxes were mentioned-I live on Long Island which has one of the USA's highest property tax rates-75 percent of these taxes fund schools-and it has gotten so rough in recent years that people are leaving LI-especially young 20 and 30 somethings that cannot afford the high cost of housing-including the high property taxes. If I did not inherit my house from my parents I probably could not afford to stay myself. I can think of people I knew growing up that ended up doing the same thing-inheriting a home from parents or relatives.

Because of this phobia-the dreaded US VS. THEM mentality is created-
Just think United We Stand,Divided...you can draw your own conclusion.
That's how I feel on this issue...LI MIKE
 
Disparishun:
Actually, so is health care and education - I don't see anyone clamoring to have the feds withdraw social services transfers though.

Erm, withdraw != supply. Sure, money's great where you can get it. Obviously noone wants to see less of it, although I doubt very much that you are correct that noone is clamouring to see that money managed by the provinces. (Hello, Quebec City.)

But when you don't have money that you think you ought, you look to the person responsible for supplying it. Unlike Olive, who doesn't seem to think that the provincial government's taxation powers have anything to do with municipal finance. Odd.

In addition, it isn't like Flaherty "wanted" the tax room to go to cities - if he does, he wouldn't have been putting forth arguments like "we cut taxes, but look what "other levels of governments" do..." in the debate.

I couldn't care less what Flaherty did or did not want. Nor is it relevant.

There was broad support from the Liberal government for 1 of the tax percentage points per dollar to go to municipalities as a recurring revenue stream. Since then, the sales tax has gone down that 1 percentage point.

But suddenly the Liberal government is uninterested in this recurring revenue stream, instead muttering darkly about one-time transfers.

In addition to that, if Flaherty really is that into the whole municipalities are not our responsiblity arguments, it would not have provided selective funding for infrastructure projects as it deemed fit. You tell me why building a road out in rural Canada, which is quite frankly a provincial responsiblity under your argument, should be funded federally, with the photo ops and all that?

No, you've misstated my argument. Governments, such as the federal government, will always find loopholey ways to do things they think will benefit them politically.

To leap from there to the argument that governments should be looked to or relied on to act in those loopholey ways to solve problems is quite a stretch, however.

Hey, I get it. The Conservatives are dark overlords. Let us hate them, despise them, sling mud, editorialize, and fight the noble battle against said overlords. Evil incarnate must be resisted!

And, you know, I don't so much have a problem with it. Political interest is a good thing.

Until partisanry trumps everything else. The fact is that we need the recurring penny revenue as a tax matter. And once it's there, it would be hard to get rid of. It was, in short, a very good idea.

But once the provincial election was done and gone, it seems that everyone started giving the provincial government a free pass again. Just when it's time to hold their feet to the fire and actually get something done.

Should the feds give billions of dollars to Canadian municipalities? Hey, that would be great! And perhaps George Soros, and the U.N., and Shell Oil could kick in some megabucks too. Grand!

But when it comes to demanding money, not just hoping for it, then yes. The best people to lobby are the ones who are actually responsible for this portfolio. But, instead, we're all fixated on the feds for one-time transfers and, hey, gimme some of that surplus.

Bizarre.

Besides, the whole point of the debate is not whether the city are the creatures of the provinces under the current constitutional arrangements - but whether cities, given the changes in Canadian demographics and economy, should be something that has a national policy focus.

And here I thought the whole point of the one-penny campaign was that cities are underfunded and should no longer be.

Seriously, though, whether or not the debate is "national" is great and all -- just like for health care -- but I think it is a bit beside the point on this narrow issue of municipal finance. We're in a position to create a recurring, sustainable revenue stream. I even think McGuinty could do it and not lose political capital, which is clearly the only thing motivating him. So isn't it time to actually pay attention to the provincial government and put some pressure on it to do so?
 
Of course this could have also been 'The Coming Collapse of Canada's Municipal Infrastructure - Introduction'.

Clearly without this phobia the tasks at hand would not be so daunting. These urban areas, as they are in many nations, are a critical resource. But with these backwater attitudes and the corresponding political extentions, we have what we have.
 
Its time for the biggest urban cities to unite, power in numbers right, exchange ideas, work together , and put pressure on government!
Become self reliant in food (urban farms), alternative energy, reduce garbage www.garbagerevolution.com, ect. Cites have huge advertising promotional power to influence visionary more open minded thinking to spread all over the country, its funny how the reasons people hate cites like polution,traffic and so on are the very things that cities are trying to fix but need the funds but they dont wanna give the derserved funds, so its like a control issue for sure.
 
I live in this city and I lead a very rural life.

I have a back garden where I grow flowers, which I sometimes cut and put in a vase in the summer. I grow raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and gooseberries and make jam. The avenue I live on has a wonderful canopy of mature trees. There are two lovely parks within easy walking distance. There are farmers markets with fresh produce. Cardinal birds, jays, hawks, and all kinds of pretty birds fly above my head, and nest in trees nearbye.

Toronto is full of traditional low rise neighbourhoods like this. They work just as they were designed to work, for people. For most of the day, when the homeowners go to work, and the kids are at school, these lovely Toronto neighbourhoods are completely deserted and utterly quiet. They in no way reflect the negative stereoptype that some who live outside the city have of them. Nor do they in any way fit the stereotype that many people have about what constitutes urbanity.

These neighbourhoods are not by any stretch of the imagination "mixed-use" ... and they thrive. Just ask anyone who lives in one.

Jane Jacobs lived in one too.
 
^I wouldn't call that a rural lifestyle at all.

But when it comes to demanding money, not just hoping for it, then yes. The best people to lobby are the ones who are actually responsible for this portfolio. But, instead, we're all fixated on the feds for one-time transfers and, hey, gimme some of that surplus.

Bizarre.
The problem isn't that cities are lobbying the wrong people for money. The problem is that cities have no power. The only way to fix that is to have them recognized in the constitution itself. They should be recognized exactly the way provinces are - with taxing powers and responsibilities to provide services.
 
The problem isn't that cities are lobbying the wrong people for money. The problem is that cities have no power.

No, that's a separate problem. One day, perhaps we will change the constitution to, well, constitute cities as a third level of government, and then we will have a tripartite system of federalism, as you advocate. Who knows?

But, until that day, there are the actually-existing lobbying campaigns. Like the one that cities have directed at the feds -- from whom, I agree, it would be dandy to receive a whack of money -- and not directed at the province, the government which runs the cities and should be creating the recurring penny-per-dollar revenue stream that we need, and that cities used to advocate. Until McGuinty's reelection, that is.

The recurring theme here seems to be: why, no, this has nothing to do with the provincial government. Don't mention them. They need not do anything.

The recurring theme is exactly backward.

The only way to fix that is to have them recognized in the constitution itself. They should be recognized exactly the way provinces are - with taxing powers and responsibilities to provide services.

The only way to fix the problem of municipalities not being equal to the provincial and federal governments is, indeed, to make municipalities equal to the provincial and federal governments.

But there are much simpler ways to raise a bunch of the money we need. Like, McGuinty could do what he said he supported. It would cost noone any money -- sales tax would be exactly what it was at the time McGuinty pledged undying fealty to the penny campaign, and there'd be a recurring and sustainable revenue stream for the municipalities that Ontario runs.

The key is not to confuse the problem that you believe exists, with the problem of municipal underfunding. As to why: well, Occam has this razor...
 
No, that's a separate problem. One day, perhaps we will change the constitution to, well, constitute cities as a third level of government, and then we will have a tripartite system of federalism, as you advocate. Who knows?

But, until that day, there are the actually-existing lobbying campaigns. Like the one that cities have directed at the feds -- from whom, I agree, it would be dandy to receive a whack of money -- and not directed at the province, the government which runs the cities and should be creating the recurring penny-per-dollar revenue stream that we need, and that cities used to advocate. Until McGuinty's reelection, that is.

The recurring theme here seems to be: why, no, this has nothing to do with the provincial government. Don't mention them. They need not do anything.

The recurring theme is exactly backward.



The only way to fix the problem of municipalities not being equal to the provincial and federal governments is, indeed, to make municipalities equal to the provincial and federal governments.

But there are much simpler ways to raise a bunch of the money we need. Like, McGuinty could do what he said he supported. It would cost noone any money -- sales tax would be exactly what it was at the time McGuinty pledged undying fealty to the penny campaign, and there'd be a recurring and sustainable revenue stream for the municipalities that Ontario runs.

The key is not to confuse the problem that you believe exists, with the problem of municipal underfunding. As to why: well, Occam has this razor...
I'm not confusing the problem, just looking at it differently. Yes it's the province that's responsible for municipal funding. But as long as cities don't have recognition of their own they'll be at the mercy of the whims of province. As for Occam, the simplest solution may be the best in the short term, but it doesn't prevent the next government from pulling a Mike Harris.
 
I think the Feds know exactly what's happening in cities (at least cities in Ontario).

They know what's going on. And that's why they're so anti-city. I suspect that's also why Royson James got So-Finally-Had-It with Toronto councillors.

Seems to me that cities demand taxpayers' money and then want taxpayers to bugger off.

Like hell-spawn two-year-olds their moral development is at the "It's ok if we don't get caught" stage.

Cripes, cities shun accountability like roaches flee from sunlight.

Here. Take a look at Peel Region and how they're handling the teeniest of accountability issues. (This is the might Peel Region of we-lead-Canada fame.)

CITY SNICKERS --Ousting the Ontario Ombudsman

You want the Feds or the Province to just fork over money to cities? There's no accountability mechanisms in place. The Feds and the Province know this. Cities don't want "strings attached".

It's not possible to follow many cities' money trails. The impediments in place are staggering. Everything from "Access Denied" on Freedom of Information requests to Records Destruction By-Laws that kill any paper trail. And then there's the You-Would-Just-Not-Believe lack of proper documentation of contractual agreements/services.

That Royson James dumped as he did in his last article, demonstrates at least to me that Mr. James not only knows what's going' on --he's had more than a snootful, couldn't take it anymore and was forced to cough up a Hell of a Hairball.

And correct. Had Mr. James written that tender prose in Mississauga, he'd be up for charges and arrested just like 76-year old Antonio Batista was. As you recall, Mr. Batista spent $40,000 or so to be defended by Clayton Ruby for his PotHole Poem which suggested people dig a pothole deep enough to hide the body of Mississauga Councillor, Pat Saito. Only he'd face multiple charges --one for each Councillor (except Parrish) because that's Mississauga.

You think Royson James' was over the top?

Me, I'm workin' on a poem for what to do with Mississauga Councillors and Bureacraps with---

GRAPE JELLO.

Jell-O%20Grape.JPG
 

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