How Can Toronto improve? How can Toronto become a better city overall?

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Question in the thread title.

 

[Torontovibe]

Question in the thread title.

Is this an offshoot of the Toronto VS. Chicago thread? lol Well, first off, I would limit the colour grey to only 10-20% of buildings. Yeah, I know it can't be done. I'm just dreaming here. I hate grey spandrel/aluminum siding/trim!

 

[Admiral Beez]

Relocate the homeless industry from high value downtown locations to the 'burbs. Very few cities with densely populated successful downtowns dedicate large portions for populating the nation's homeless.

Enforce laws against begging, loitering and public intoxication.

Stick the the basics of city services and keep the city's hands out of my pockets as much as possible.

 

[TonyV]

Secession from Ontario, the province which consistently shows that it just doesn't want to understand big city issues. Ontario, the province with its hands so deeply in Toronto's pockets. Lose Ontario and get the show on the road, T.O.

 

[Ak2809]

We need more walk in clinics, and ones that are open late or all night.

 

[jje1000]

First Step: We need to be able to honestly discuss topics like taxes and transportation without constantly spiraling into a "us vs. them" conversation.

 

[UserNameToronto]

Relocate the homeless industry from high value downtown locations to the 'burbs. Very few cities with densely populated successful downtowns dedicate large portions for populating the nation's homeless.

Agree.

Stick the the basics of city services and keep the city's hands out of my pockets as much as possible.

Do not agree. Great cities use taxes as a way to manage behaviour (Vehicle registration tax, road tolls, and so forth). Hate abandoned buildings, rooming houses, or front lawn parking pads? Then tax 'em! The world's most successful cities, London and NYC, are not exactly low-tax jurisdictions.

 

[Tewder]

Secession from Ontario, the province which consistently shows that it just doesn't want to understand big city issues. Ontario, the province with its hands so deeply in Toronto's pockets. Lose Ontario and get the show on the road, T.O.

Why is it always the knee-jerk response of some Canadians to threaten to split apart? Are our unions as tenuous as this? Are we that incapable of playing nicely with one another? Seems fairly parochial to me.

... and isn't this very divisiveness a defining characteristic of the city itself with its balkanized ethnic enclaves and intractable interest groups? There is no bigger vision in Toronto, no sense of collectivity that might define us as being larger than the sum of our parts. Yes, it's true that Toronto is woefully underfunded and that it deserves more from our provincial and federal leaders but I suspect that even if they did throw more cash at this embarrassingly prosperous place its streets would still look a mess as myopic, self-interested parties vie for spoils.

 

[TonyV]

Why is it always the knee-jerk response of some Canadians to threaten to split apart? Are our unions as tenuous as this? Are we that incapable of playing nicely with one another? Seems fairly parochial to me.

... and isn't this very divisiveness a defining characteristic of the city itself with its balkanized ethnic enclaves and intractable interest groups? There is no bigger vision in Toronto, no sense of collectivity that might define us as being larger than the sum of our parts. Yes, it's true that Toronto is woefully underfunded and that it deserves more from our provincial and federal leaders but I suspect that even if they did throw more cash at this embarrassingly prosperous place its streets would still look a mess as myopic, self-interested parties vie for spoils.

I love it.

While my response had more than a touch of sarcasm, I am at the same time being very true. I don't expect things to change. My travels take me to deepest Ontario where hatred for the city and its values runs deep.

More importantly, however, no matter what the flavour of the provincial (and I do mean provincial) government, they love to give us the shaft because they can. McGuinty and Co. decried the downloading implemented by the Harris gang, but are slow to turn things around. The "gap" still exists.

A city as prosperous as this should already have an adequate subway system .... and so on. Crises get invented at the provincial level; we know, at the local level, what our needs are and the rurals just don't get that part.

 

[Thanos]

De-amalgamation. It's not an us vs them issue. Both Scarborough and Etobicoke will be better off just as Toronto will be better off.
It happened in Montreal and it's working good. Boston and San Francisco chose not to amalgamate.
You can not deny that there is a difference of opinion.

 

[ON1]

De-amalgamation. It's not an us vs them issue. Both Scarborough and Etobicoke will be better off just as Toronto will be better off.

I agree. The people living in downtown Toronto seem to have very different views on how the city should be run than the people in former areas like Etobicoke, North York, etc...

 

[Tewder]

My travels take me to deepest Ontario where hatred for the city and its values runs deep.

You will find an urban/hinterland dichotomy almost anywhere... but 'hatred'? With all your talk of seccession and this supposed "north and the south"-type animosity I can't help but think you've watched too many repeats of Gone With The Wind.

More importantly, however, no matter what the flavour of the provincial (and I do mean provincial) government, they love to give us the shaft because they can. McGuinty and Co. decried the downloading implemented by the Harris gang, but are slow to turn things around. The "gap" still exists.

Not sure if this is sarcasm as well but this is simply paranoia. I'm no fan of McGuinty but as you say things weren't all that different under Harris. Is this a reflection of some underlaying provincial hatred for the very city where Queens Park sits? No, it is a reflection of prevailing political circumstances which also saw Toronto freezed out at the federal level. It's the basic reality that neither the liberals nor the conservatives, at either the provincial or federal levels, had anything to gain in supporting Toronto as votes were sewn up before any election campaigning began.

A city as prosperous as this should already have an adequate subway system .... and so on. Crises get invented at the provincial level; we know, at the local level, what our needs are and the rurals just don't get that part.

... which comes back to my point that you can look for scapegoats anywhere you want but it doesn't change the fact that Toronto is its own worst enemy. No matter how much money is thrown at the city it will always be grabbed at and claimed by the myriad self-interested parties that wield the real power there, while the city as collective construct continues to languish.

 

[jn_12]

Stop acting like we're poor. I know I sound like a broken record but we're the richest city in one of the richest countries in the world. We should act like it. To go along with this, let's start looking at return on investment instead of dollars spent. And I don't mean return on investment in terms of economic dollars recovered. Let's look at other indicators to start measuring value.

 

[TonyV]

Really, Tewder, I've heard all of your arguments before, and I've used them myself at times. Frankly from a third reading of your ink, I deduce that we actually have the same frustration, only the flavour is different.

Others in this thread have raised undoing amalgamation as an improvement. Amalgamation was forced, politicians in Ontario ignored democracy to achieve amalgamation. Can there be anything more condemning of Ontario than that alone? Add that we still have the OMB, and that other municipalities were able to use the law in order to ward off forced amalgamations. Ontario has us in a vice.

So, someone asked how we could improve Toronto. I could have answered with something mundane such as rejuvenating our public spaces (with public money), but I chose the big picture instead. That is to say, we are growing, and at the same time we are experiencing transport problems that are so bad that that our way of doing business is under threat. Ontario's "Big Move" has a twenty year timeline, and that is politics at its worst. That Toronto should look to this province for a solution is a hopeless situation because those provincials don't get it, and they seem to have no sense of what is at stake.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Stop acting like we're poor. I know I sound like a broken record but we're the richest city in one of the richest countries in the world.

I define "rich" as the amount of revenue left over after expenses are paid. If you've got no money left after you've paid the bills, it doesn't matter if you've got the highest revenue on the planet.