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Should the megacity stay or be broken up?

Megacity stay or breakup?


  • Total voters
    24
Just starting to dig on why Melbourne appears to 'have such a leg-up' on Toronto. I knew the State of Victoria was a huge part in promoting effective civic governance, but this is really eye-opening. If only in Ontario....?
[...]
Local government has been referred to in the Victorian constitution since 1979 (sec. IIA), but it does not operate so as to make Victoria a federation or protect the borders or powers of local government from amendment by executive order or act of parliament. Today, the constitution recognises it "a distinct and essential tier of government" and prohibits a council being dismissed by executive order, but grants significant powers to the state parliament in respect of local government. The clauses have been amended many times by parliament, but since 2006 the Constitution Act has required a referendum to further alter them.

The current Local Government Act dates to 1989 and eliminated administrative distinctions between cities and shires, introduced the category of rural city and removed the possibility of declaring any further boroughs or towns (existing boroughs and towns were retained, although only one, the Borough of Queenscliffe, remains today, the other being abolished with the 1994 restructure). Five shires became rural cities but were dissolved with the 1994 restructure. [...]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Victoria
 
And no-one is now. There is, however, a very good case for separating the core from the suburbs. If the burbs want to stay cohesive, power to them. They might be better off joining surrounding regions they have more in common with, but the issues that the old City of Toronto is faced with are being skewed by suburban interests. There never was a vote to amalgamate. It was a shotgun wedding from the start.

I agree that the mentality of the suburbs is holding back the urban core, but I don't think it is sequestered just to the suburban parts of Toronto. I think much of the inner city is very suburban in its mentality. look at south of bloor to college around bathurst area. That is very much in the city but if you stuck in the middle of that its just rows and rows of houses and it looks very much like a suburb.. Many people like this, maybe because they haven't been to other cities and seen what a real city looks like, or maybe because of the whole frontier mentality of Canada. Adding the really suburban parts into Toronto doesn't help, but it's not the only problem to the lack of urbanisation in Toronto.
 
This thread has beeen around for a while and the poll has had limited responses. The City will not be broken up, though more responsibilities couldcertainly be given to the Community Councils.
 
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This thread has beeen around for a while and the poll has had limited responses. The City will not be broken up, though more responsibilities couldcertainly be given to the Community Counciks.
Why couldn’t the City be broken up? It wasn’t always like this, and the current arrangement doesn’t work for either the core or the suburbs. Are we incapable of change, or of learning from more successful city regions like Melbourne and Sydney?
 

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