Ah, dichotomy. Let's just look at some of his comments.
In this thread (which is about expensive cities, Toronto is being held up with other 'world class cities' in the world - a label I don't feel is justified, except maybe with respect to traffic, expense and poor planning. This thread started out as a mere reporting of an article about expensive cities, which it is, according to the article. Of course, all such things are relative and our movement up this scale has everything to do with the Canadian dollar (and oil in Alberta) and nothing to do with the city itself. You're really the only one who has brought up the "world class" thing, using it as some kind of straw man to knock down, when it's entirely in your own head. But, here as elsewhere, you could use the opposite of this statistic (were it true) to justify your rants. If Toronto was shown to be extremely cheap by world standards, then I can only assume we would hear from you something like "While other cities prosper and their expense shows that they are in demand as places to live and work, Toronto falls farther and farther behind".
You say, London and Paris are 1,000 years older than Toronto, yet our council will go to great lengths to look at how London is dealing with its downtown! Are we not to look at examples of how successful cities are dealing with common issues? As if every city in the world isn't sticking it's nose into London's congestion zone to see if it might work for them, and well they should be. New York did the same. Let me continue with your counter-arguments: "London has a congestion zone which is innovative and daring, yet Toronto wouldn't even consider something like this!".
You say, [Sao Paulo has] stacked highways, underground highways and even 3 levels of subway in some places. They have buried their roads and built parks on top. I've been there, they also have helipads on many downtown buildings so that the rich can escape the endless traffic horrors of the city, (strangely, I heard chopper a LOT while I was there, and helipads were extremely common). They've buried the river on which they were initially settled so that there is no waterfront in the central city at all, their rich people live behind high gated electrified walls with armed guards in sentry posts standing outside them, and there are huge abandoned skyscrapers dotting the central city right beside the main rail station, abandoned graffiti-covered shells still housing a few unfortunates. (By the way, I quite enjoyed Sao Paulo, but I'm under no illusion that for the majority of people living there, it's a hellish place to be). What's your point here? After making direct comparisons to Sao Paulo, you then say ....
Toronto needs North American solutions because we have more in common with our neighbors to the south than we do those in Sao Paulo or Hong Kong or London, all the while drawing comparisons between us and other cities. In a North American context, Toronto does very well. No city apart from New York has the transit ridership that we do, Los Angeles was recently excited because a single condo was built with stores in the bottom and people actually bought there, and we are essentially in the middle of the rust belt and yet have thrived while so many cities around us have not.
You have some kind of chip on your shoulder. I can speak for myself that I hardly think Toronto is beyond criticism, but the kind of drivel that you write (and write, and write, and write) is quite pointless, thoughtless and ill-directed, and I can only imagine reflects some kind of unhappiness that is all your own, and has little to do with the city I live in.