Johnny Au
Senior Member
Toronto has great potential though. One day, it will become one of the top cities in the Global North, when memories of Rob Ford would only show up in history textbooks.
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Halfway through the decade in Toronto. What's our status?
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yin_yang
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Most people would laugh if you said that Toronto wasn't one of the best cities in the global north and the world. We are amazing and the insecurity is pretty funny. I guess it's out of the want to be better and better, so we understand...but Toronto is absolutely a world-class city. We're like, a no. 3 seed in the NHL playoffs. That is pretty good.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I sense you're not really looking for insight, but if you can't count from one to ten to determine the middle of a decade that's not our problem, but it is yours.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Start+date+of+21st+century?
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AlvinofDiaspar
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Well, the Romans got Caligula, Nero and Commodus (just off the top of my head), and we only have Lastman and Ford. We aren't quite alpha when it comes to dysfunctional leaders yet (colourful/criminal characters from Vaughan and Hamilton notwithstanding). And unlike the former, ours can't even get a world class Ferris Wheel built.
AoD
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pman
Senior Member
But we're number 1 in status anxiety and telling ourselves - without any empirical evidence - how much more splendid we are than just about anywhere else. Honestly, do Toronto boosters ever travel?
Riverdale Rink Rat
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I was originally going to reply to IrishMonk with this, but his rant is so epic and so wrong-headed I didn't even know how to begin. (aside, IM: How can all those American cities be so much better than Toronto, but Toronto is so bad because its economy is too linked to America?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
Wikipedia has got a great compendium of various rankings of cities. I prefer the first, as it groups rather than nitpicking #12 vs. #13, etc., and also feels the most 'right' to me. Alpha++: London, NYC. Alpha+: HK/Paris/Tokyo, etc. Alpha: a group of 13 including both Chicago and Toronto.
Toronto is the business and financial centre of a G-8 country. It attracts immigrants and businesses like no other city except London and NYC. It has a fantastic cultural scene. And it has been growing by leaps & bounds for 50 years from a backwater to a truly global city. To compare Toronto to Stockholm is absurd.
Your prediction that, due to demographics, India will be a bigger population and therefore bigger economy than China, is well supported -- but wouldn't you rather live in a city where the GDP/per capita is 10x that of even India's first-tier cities? Which will still be the case with Toronto in 2050.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth
IM's 'Melborne and Sydney' thing is also a bit of a canard. Yes, India and China are growing very quickly. But even in 2050, being next to the USA means Toronto is right beside the 3rd largest country by population and by far the richest of the big economies. Besides, Melborne & Sydney are leveraging the fact they're the biggest English-speaking cities close to China to stoke their growth! Why is that? Because London and NYC are still the global leaders in any shape or form, and will be for the next 50 years. No disrespect intended to Shanghai or Hong Kong or New Delhi. Instead of gazing in longing at Australia, how about a little optimism about Canada?
Assuming that the new immigration rules enhance the quality of immigrants pouring into Toronto rather than cutting off the flow, I'd say 35 years from now Toronto will have taken another leap and will be an Alpha+ city to rival Hong Kong and Paris.
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Riverdale Rink Rat
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All the time. Do Toronto detractors ever travel? Toronto's a great city. There's lots of other great cities, but Toronto's right up there.
Irishmonk
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I think the ratings of that Global city index need to be taken with a grain elevator of salt. The bustling metropolis (pop. 150,000) of Port Louis, Mauritius is given the same Beta rating as Hanoi--a fast growing (7 million+) capital city of a developing nation of 90 million--as well as Seattle, Abu Dhabi, Lagos, Rotterdam and Shenzen. It's even ranked higher than St Petersburg, Phoenix and Osaka. I would love to know what the criteria are for this ranking system--obviously being the big fish in a little pond is a key factor. It should be pretty clear that Toronto is coasting on its own regional importance more than anything else.
This lack of competition in our pond is one thing that might be holding Toronto back. Competing dual cities like Dallas/Houston, Sydney/Melbourne have to try harder to come out ahead of their rival--esp. the secondary city in the relationship. When we were playing second fiddle to Montreal we built monuments like City Hall and the TD Centre to up our status. Now, being the self proclaimed "centre of the universe" and the only game in town, Toronto can drown itself in highly profitable mediocrity with no real immediate repercussions.
And the notion that Toronto will someday rival Paris in any way shape or form is highly unrealistic and not terribly constructive. We should be taking cues from more similar cities like Melbourne, Boston and, yes, Chicago.
Riverdale Rink Rat
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IM -- if I may say so, this is a much more reasonable (albeit pessimistic) take on Toronto.
Global City General criteria:
"The following is a general guide to the rankings:[9]
Alpha++ cities are London and New York City, which are vastly more integrated with the global economy than all other cities.
Alpha+ cities complement London and New York City by filling advanced service niches for the global economy.
Alpha and Alpha- cities are cities that link major economic regions into the world economy.
Beta level cities are cities that link moderate economic regions into the world economy.
Gamma level cities are cities that link smaller economic regions into the world economy.
Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be obviously dependent on world cities."
'Beta' is not an unreasonable -- if large -- category to catch Hanoi and Port Louis. Hanoi might be big, but it sure doesn't impact the world economy much at this point.
'Alpha +' currently includes:
Hong Kong Hong Kong
France Paris
Singapore Singapore
China Shanghai
Japan Tokyo
China Beijing
Australia Sydney
United Arab Emirates Dubai
Toronto's not there yet, but it could easily rank with a number of those cities in 35 years. Boston, Melborne and Chicago might have things to teach Toronto, but I'd say we should be looking aspirationally to this group for inspiration and advice. I'd much rather Toronto was trying to grow into a Hong Kong or Paris than stagnate into a Montreal or Boston.
pman
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I travel to NYC and London for work, and get to SF, Boston, DC, Paris, Melbourne and Sydney from time to time, so yes I do travel and as far as I can tell Toronto really doesn't measure up to any of these cities. But maybe I'm using the wrong criteria. In what way is Toronto "right up there" with the world's best cities? Do we invent the future (SF Bay Area/Boston)? Are we a global business and cultural hub (NYC/London/Paris)? Do we capture the world's imagination in any way (Sydney)? Do we have handsome architecture and a well designed and maintained public realm (Melbourne)? Maybe we have great restaurants (I strongly disagree. One empirical fact is that Michelin rates much of the world worth rating but doesn't bother with Canada).
I'm not suggesting Toronto is that bad a place to live, but the vague assertion that we're somehow a global alpha city, or "great" in any way, doesn't seem to fit the facts.
Riverdale Rink Rat
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1. Yes. At least to the extent Boston does, and particularly in the field of health science through UofT and its research hospitals.
2. Not to the extent as those you list, but much more than you're willing to admit. See my previous Wikipedia link.
3. Toronto, due to its status as the most integrated diverse population outside London, has begun to capture the world's imagination in ways it has never before.
4. I'm assuming you want to marinate in the whinge-fest which is UT about Toronto's architecture, but despite the overall UT opinion, we have both a Gehry and a Libeskind museum, plus the boot and the Mirvish monuments to come. We have probably the most photographed/filmed modernist City Hall on the planet. And we have a collection of Mies towers, not just one lonely one.
5. This is a bit of a weird, grudging concession, but Michelin only rates NYC, Chicago, and SF in all of North America. That a private French company doesn't rate restaurants in Toronto has everything to do with their projections of sales of those guides and nothing at all to do with Toronto.
And, finally, 6: It wasn't a vague assertion. It was a compendium of several lists of world rankings of cities where Toronto consistently ranked in the teens.
Maybe you're jaded by NYC and London -- which, if you recall, are explicitly ranked by themselves above all the others -- but I lived two years in DC and have a brother in SF and my in-laws live in Paris. Toronto is not Paris, London, nor NYC, but you need to face the facts: despite the blindness to the facts of many of its own citizens, Toronto is a global alpha city. Which, by the way, you yourself epitomize -- or why would you need to travel to your list of cities for work? You need to go to those cities for work because people in those cities connect with Toronto for your needed skills. Not to humour you or Toronto -- because your Toronto-based skill set meets their demands.
vatche
Senior Member
I travel a lot and I have noticed that a lot of cities really make an effort to beautify certain areas of the cities. they embellish the streets, the sidewalks, flowers, lighting. Toronto does not. they do the minimum. things have changed slightly in the past few years but I feel like it still has a long ways to go before it gets there. every neighborhood gets the same amount of attention.
JGHali
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AlvinofDiaspar
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