How Toronto Lost Its Groove

[TonyV]

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?

Deamalgamation comes up regularly in various threads. If amalgamation had been conceived in a spirit of "let's accomplish something", things would be different. But amalgamation was implemented as a vehicle to download costs, in other words, passing the buck, and that accomplishes zip.

 

[Thanos]

TonyV, you should get more involved with city hall. I see some great potential in your posts.

 

[TonyV]

TonyV, you should get more involved with city hall. I see some great potential in your posts.

I am highly complimented. I admire your posts, too, Thanos.

It's a funny thing, as I was posting this morning I was thinking to myself "I should get more involved".

The Fords won their election victories by using social media. We, the people, have power. We can dethrone The Fords next time around by using same tools. A civic administration squandering the future of a great city will be easier to defeat than a totalitarian middle eastern evildoer.

For your info I am a former I.T. pro, who has managed to retire fairly young. I have the time (not sure about the energy sometimes) to get involved, and I will. My efforts will start here at UT. A new thread may be born today or tomorrow. I am at this time evaluating my presentation... I want the thread to be very useful to all who have come to realize that we are having our time, and our future, wasted. Heaven knows where this will all lead.

 

[Tewder]

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.

Do it!!

 

[Tewder]

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.

Well there's a fine line between a defeatist attitude and the sort of cautiously alarmist/pessimistic one in the article.... but how long must a situation continue to errode through apathy before the fine line disappears?

 

[Anth]

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.

Miller is indeed an intelligent guy with good intentions, but he needed to be a more of a pragmatist and less of an ideologue.

 

[spider]

The Fords won their election victories by using social media.

All the candidates used social media, the winner's message was judged to be the most popular by a tidy majority of the plain ordinary citizens who voted. Democracy at it's simplest, for better or for worse. The media was not the message, the message was the message.

 

[MisterF]

Something like a GTA-wide regional municipality of some kind would help. Sure there's the concern that it would dominate the province and rival the provincial government, but maybe it's time we realized that's not such a bad thing. Urban regions are more relevant than provinces nowadays. In the meantime the only regional planning we have is from the province itself. And in that respect the province has done a pretty good job - the Greenbelt, Places to Grow, Metrolinx. Even the previous Convervative government got into that game with the Oak Ridges Moraine. But at the end of the day Metrolinx lacks real powers, Places to Grow has flaws, and the Greenbelt will only live as long as the government of the day wants it to. Something more permanent and less prone to political whims needs to be created.

The article mentions unchecked sprawl and later mentions Places to Grow in a dismissive manner, saying it remains to be seen if it will actually do anything. While it has flaws, it has already shown results. Higher densities are being built, transit use has increased, and less land is being built on. It has forced municipalities to rethink how they grow - sure there's still greenfield growth, but the amount of infill has skyrocketed. Just in the Markham Centre area where I live, the amount of development planned and underway is staggering. And while the results of what's been built has been mixed at best, plans for the next waves of growth promise to be better, and a huge improvement over MCC and SCC.

Absolutely agree that our biggest weakness is government cheapness, whether it's new subway lines or streetscaping or arts funding. And our national culture of stinginess. We have a "can't do" attitude, reminding ourselves of our low national population density (irrelevant in southern Ontario) or that we just can't afford what other countries do without a second thought. And then there's the glorifying of the countryside and wilderness, and the idea that farmers and miners are the salt of the earth who support the corrupt, overspending city. It's an attitude that results in Toronto being chronically underfunded. Things are slowly changing in places like Toronto and Ottawa but it's the same as it's ever been in small towns. Ultimately, to go full circle, there needs to be a permanent regional government for the GTA, like merging the regional municipalities. Something like that would be powerful enough to get the resources the city needs.

 

[kkgg7]

Agree with the think small and act cheap part .

I think Toronto should become a province city on its own to solve all the BS. The City of Toronto has more people and a larger economy than all provinces except BC, Quebec and Alberta, the GTA is bigger than all but Quebec. I mean, why PEI, NS, NB and Newfoundland get to be "provinces" anyway? Their population is smaller than many mid-sized cities.

 

[Irishmonk]

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

3

 

[taal]

For all the comments about sprawl, don't most admit we have some the densest suburbs in North America ?

Moreover, how many other suburbs are building just as much as ours are ?

 

[adma]

Agree with the think small and act cheap part .

I think Toronto should become a province city on its own to solve all the BS. The City of Toronto has more people and a larger economy than all provinces except BC, Quebec and Alberta, the GTA is bigger than all but Quebec. I mean, why PEI, NS, NB and Newfoundland get to be "provinces" anyway? Their population is smaller than many mid-sized cities.

You might as well say the same about Vermont or Wyoming relative to the rest of the USA--yet I haven't heard of a movement to create a bunch more DC city-state/district wannabes...

 

[Torontovibe]

Hey, how come there are no threads or comments about Occupy Wall Street coming to Toronto tomorrow. All you rich guys are too busy buying and selling condos to care about political corruption and social injustice? The protest starts tomorrow and I hope there is a big turn out. (Not that I'm expecting it. This is apathetic Toronto)
http://www.occupytoronto.com/occupyto.html

 

[freshcutgrass]

For all the comments about sprawl, don't most admit we have some the densest suburbs in North America ?

You're probably right...but isn't it a somewhat hollow victory? Reminds me of that old joke about arguing on the internet being like winning a medal in the Special Olympics...at the end of the day, you're still retarded.

If amalgamation had been conceived in a spirit of "let's accomplish something", things would be different. But amalgamation was implemented as a vehicle to download costs, in other words, passing the buck, and that accomplishes zip.

I totally agree with you. But as far as switching from Toronto's two-tiered system of municipal government to a single tier, I think it was less relevant as people make it out to be, as by that time, the two-tiered system had accomplished most of what it set out to do in 1953. The vast majority of city services had shifted to the upper tier. The "local" aspect of it was a good thing though, and for that reason, I feel we should have kept the old system.

 

[kEiThZ]

The GTA needs better governance. Amalgamation was stupidly executed. That's the problem. Instead of merging the boroughs in the 416, the province should have merged the regional governments in the GTA. This would have yielded one police force (no more competing wages between services), one ambulance service, one fire service, and most importantly one transit service.

At the very minimum the "inner" 905 (the regions bordering the 416) should have been rolled in with Toronto's Metropolitan council. Amalgamation screwed Toronto while achieving no real improvement in governance region wide.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to change. Provincial politicians will fear any sort of pan-regional GTA governing body. 905 politicians will fear being dominated by the 416 in such a setup. etc. etc. Yet, the only way to run the region cohesively is to do this.

I'd love to see a Greater Toronto Regional Council with elected representatives from each federal ward and a strong mayor system (the representatives act like parliamentarians). Put that council in charge of all service delivery. Leave the municipalities to deal with planning issues, bylaws, etc.