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Toronto Metropolitan Community?

denfromoakvillemilton said:
How come there is no Organization for Toronto to coordinate its efforts? Montreal and Portland, OR have some.

http://cmm.qc.ca/

http://www.oregonmetro.gov/

Would this not help the Toronto region more than everyone working on their own? I see almost no coordination between Toronto and its suburban areas.
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Proposed by the Golden task force back in the 90s as I recall. Mike Harris read the report, apparently didn't understand it, and gave us amalgamation instead.
 
When Metropolitan Toronto was formed in the 1950s it was to do just that, coordinate the planning of services across borders. York and East York were the suburbs, while Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough were mostly undeveloped rural with exurban commuter towns with the beginnings of low density sprawl. The thought of the urban area reaching as far as it does today was unthinkable.

To the topic, I absolutely think it is time for some kind of official merger of the region. A Regional Municipality of Greater Toronto, with the cities of Toronto, Halton, Peel, York, and Durham would be a good place to start, though it may require some adjusting since Burlington is part of Hamilton's CMA, and Oshawa and surrounding municipalities are a separate metropolitan area entirely. Still, a unified government to better coordinate planning and services throughout the region would help to quell some of controversy of suburbanites using urban infrastructure while not paying for it directly, and vice-versa, since we would all be paying taxes to the region rather than our local and regional municipalities.
 
Electrify said:
When Metropolitan Toronto was formed in the 1950s it was to do just that, coordinate the planning of services across borders. York and East York were the suburbs, while Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough were mostly undeveloped rural with exurban commuter towns with the beginnings of low density sprawl. The thought of the urban area reaching as far as it does today was unthinkable.

To the topic, I absolutely think it is time for some kind of official merger of the region. A Regional Municipality of Greater Toronto, with the cities of Toronto, Halton, Peel, York, and Durham would be a good place to start, though it may require some adjusting since Burlington is part of Hamilton's CMA, and Oshawa and surrounding municipalities are a separate metropolitan area entirely. Still, a unified government to better coordinate planning and services throughout the region would help to quell some of controversy of suburbanites using urban infrastructure while not paying for it directly, and vice-versa, since we would all be paying taxes to the region rather than our local and regional municipalities.
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I would agree. Places like Bomanville, Port Perry, Halton Hills, Bradford and even Hamilton need to be more closely tied together. It's better and goes with the less government theme.
 
However, keep in mind that a strict, dumb "unified government" would be insurmountably humongous in geography and population. It'd be like NYC expanding to include the new "boroughs" of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, maybe even crossing state lines into Bergen or Hudson or Fairfield...
 
Den, you might be interested in this: David Topping is compiling a list of Toronto's neighbourhood residents' associations -->

http://davidtopping.tumblr.com/post...out-where-torontos-residents-associations-are
and http://davidtopping.tumblr.com/post/14320310091/why-my-neighbourhood-needs-something-more-and-why-an

Here's a pretty good article that discusses amalgamation of the six municipal governments and its effect on the City: http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.11-society-how-toronto-lost-its-groove/
 
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grey said:
Den, you might be interested in this: David Topping is compiling a list of Toronto's neighbourhood residents' associations -->

http://davidtopping.tumblr.com/post...out-where-torontos-residents-associations-are
and http://davidtopping.tumblr.com/post/14320310091/why-my-neighbourhood-needs-something-more-and-why-an

Here's a pretty good article that discusses amalgamation of the six municipal governments and its effect on the City: http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.11-society-how-toronto-lost-its-groove/
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Thanks! Will check out!!!
 
adma said:
However, keep in mind that a strict, dumb "unified government" would be insurmountably humongous in geography and population. It'd be like NYC expanding to include the new "boroughs" of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, maybe even crossing state lines into Bergen or Hudson or Fairfield...
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Not exactly. More like the various counties in the New York area merging their municipalities, and NYC and these new municipalities forming their own county (this is of course ignoring that each borough of New York is in fact its own county).

A "Greater Toronto Region" would not be as uncommon as you may think. In the last decade, cities across Ontario and Canada have merged with their surrounding municipalities. Ottawa, Hamilton, Halifax, and Kingston are just a few examples. However, most of these annexed not just their surrounding suburbs, but exurbs and hinterland. When Toronto annexed in 1998, it only did so for its immediate suburbs, leaving the latter two untouched.

Finally, having several small suburban municipal towns surrounding a central city is not the most sound form of urban politics. It is like death by a thousand paper cuts, as people move out of the city yet continue to leech off of its resources. What has happened in recent decades is that people don't even associate with the central city, and simply meet all their needs within in their area or along suburban ring roads, leaving the central city to rot. Fortunately Toronto is not there, but has infrastructure designed for such purposes (lots of smaller suburban municipalities, 407 by pass, etc.).
 
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