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Toronto as a Global City? What's holding us back?

toronto has a lot going for it, including a young, international population and an expanding downtown. for me it's biggest drawback is that it's just so damn ugly. for every cool building there's a kwiki-mart or strip mall just beside it. i'm not sure if toronto is the ugliest city in the developed world (we beat other bottom feeders like sacramento, sao paulo or johannesburg) but it's among them. what i think the city needs is a massive investment in landscape architecture. narrow some of those roads. plant more trees. invest in new public squares and art (outside of the financial area).
 
Cooool said:
Surely Toronto isn't more important than Toronto.
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Shirley Toronto is considerably less important than Toronto, but she has nothing to be ashamed about.

Seriously though...

Toronto will become a Global City™ when we finally get the Agha Khan Centre, a train to the airport, the DRL, more LED lighting, a Summer Olympics, a 2nd hockey team, an NFL franchise, a CSI franchise, buried overhead wires, a reclad ROM, a tunnel to the Islands, a +1000 ft Norman Foster skyscraper, a merger with Mississauga, a stronger Mayor and weaker city council, nicer newspaper boxes, bigger sidewalk trees, lower business taxes, higher property taxes, a new sales tax, a congestion tax, a decongestant tax, a Formula 1 Fuel Tax (for our future Formula 1 race), an Olde Tyme Toronto Museum, a new improved Fort York, a contemporary art gallery, a planetarium, an aquarium, a reptile terrarium, a 7 star hotel & casino with Whale Shark Tank in Lobby, another appearance on The Amazing Race, some more mentions on Conan and Colbert, a bunch of condo towers in other cities named after Toronto, granite sidewalks with no asphalt filled contractor holes, a couple of big-time celebrities moving here (even if it's only for a few weeks a year), bigger domestic banks with the ability to consume troubled foreign banks, RIM relocating its head office to our waterfront, a redo of Dundas Square and surrounding buildings, a glitzy Apple Store on Yonge Street, a particle accelerator, a world class university focusing on technology and quantum mechanics--officially opened by Stephen Hawking, a permanent Cirque de Soleil show--officially opened by Celine Dion, the pedestrianisation of Yorkville, the removal of Zanta from all public spaces, the end of green glass, a warmer climate thanks to greenhouse gas, separate bike lanes, more PATH tunnels, an underground Gardiner, an above ground monorail and, finally, what will totally put us on the world map, an expensive Broadway style musical based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

We can't lose.
 
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Cooool said:
And Chicago is number 8 right behind Tokyo.

In that respect Chicago > Toronto
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That was in response to your (false) assertion that Toronto is not a global financial centre. If you actually looked at the data, you would also see that Toronto's rating is only 14 points behind Chicago in a ~700 score, and Toronto's rating rose from GFCI 5 by 9 points more than Chicago. Toronto may be imperfect in many ways, but credit should be given where credit is due.
 
Irishmonk said:
Shirley Toronto is considerably less important than Toronto, but she has nothing to be ashamed about.

Seriously though...

Toronto will become a Global Cityâ„¢ when we finally get the Agha Khan Centre, a train to the airport, the DRL, more LED lighting, a Summer Olympics, a 2nd hockey team, an NFL franchise, a CSI franchise, buried overhead wires, a reclad ROM, a tunnel to the Islands, a +1000 ft Norman Foster skyscraper, a merger with Mississauga, a stronger Mayor and weaker city council, nicer newspaper boxes, bigger sidewalk trees, lower business taxes, higher property taxes, a new sales tax, a congestion tax, a decongestant tax, a Formula 1 Fuel Tax (for our future Formula 1 race), an Olde Tyme Toronto Museum, a new improved Fort York, a contemporary art gallery, a planetarium, an aquarium, a reptile terrarium, a 7 star hotel & casino with Whale Shark Tank in Lobby, another appearance on The Amazing Race, some more mentions on Conan and Colbert, a bunch of condo towers in other cities named after Toronto, granite sidewalks with no asphalt filled contractor holes, a couple of big-time celebrities moving here (even if it's only for a few weeks a year), bigger domestic banks with the ability to consume troubled foreign banks, RIM relocating its head office to our waterfront, a redo of Dundas Square and surrounding buildings, a glitzy Apple Store on Yonge Street, a particle accelerator, a world class university focusing on technology and quantum mechanics--officially opened by Stephen Hawking, a permanent Cirque de Soleil show--officially opened by Celine Dion, the pedestrianisation of Yorkville, the removal of Zanta from all public spaces, the end of green glass, a warmer climate thanks to greenhouse gas, separate bike lanes, more PATH tunnels, an underground Gardiner, an above ground monorail and, finally, what will totally put us on the world map, an expensive Broadway style musical based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

We can't lose.
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I think you mentioned it all! lol
 
Well, Agha Khan Centre is kinda tricky. Train to the airport is coming, along with a DRL (hopefully.) More LED lighting is probably coming too. Summer Olympics might come before 2030, but I think the Pan Am games could count if we made them really good. A 2nd Hockey team is also probably gonna be coming soon, but god I hope we don't get a NFL franchise. A CSI franchise would be good. What'd be even cooler is a Canadian version of CSI, so we could include Vancouver and Montreal and have them tag up with the characters from New York :p Can't promise anything about burying our overhead wires, nor can I say that the ROM will ever change, but a tunnel to the islands is certainly doable. +1k foot Norman Foster skyscraper might be a bit tricky, but I'm hoping we can get a cool new mega-skyscraper in a decade or two. Merging with Mississauga shouldn't happen, but killing politics as it is could only be a good thing. Toronto doesn't have enough proud civic history to have an "Olde Tyme" museum, but we could replace that by blowing up the crystal from the ROM, and displaying the fragments as a metaphor for ever changing style and design. A new and improved Fort York would actually be pretty cool if you ask me. It could actually make Toronto a more interesting place to visit for vacation. A Planetarium, Aquarium and Terrarium would be nice though. There's a number of cool places to put those. We should put our 7-star Hotel and Casino in Niagara Falls though. Granite sidewalks would be very, very nice. Yonge-Dundas doesn't need to be redone. While we don't have a glitzy Apple Store on Yonge Street, we have one better. A glitzy Apple Store just off Yonge Street in a high end, climate controlled shopping mall that's connected with the subway! A permanent Cirque de Soleil might be nice, but I'm wondering if Niagara Falls would want to try to monopolize more on the Vegas-like entertainments. Pedestrianization of Yorkville is actually a good point, but I think it's the least important requirement to becoming a Global City™. I actually like Zanta. And green glass.

And we've already had a Broadway style musical based on the works of JRR Tolkien, haven't we?
 
Tewder said:
I think it is fairly self-evident that Toronto is an important global city, even if it doesn't really often look or act like one, or even perceive itself to be one. It's just that whole identity crisis thing that always makes Toronto seem like the lanky ackward guy at the party who just doesn't know yet how hot he is. In this sense a little grooming and attitude will go a long way.
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Did someone shout Bingo? Run down there and check their card!
 
Irishmonk said:
Seriously though...

Toronto will become a Global Cityâ„¢ when ...
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Brilliant post Irishmonk. In my mind I heard 'The Rant' voice as I read it.


golodhendil said:
That was in response to your (false) assertion that Toronto is not a global financial centre. If you actually looked at the data, you would also see that Toronto's rating is only 14 points behind Chicago in a ~700 score, and Toronto's rating rose from GFCI 5 by 9 points more than Chicago. Toronto may be imperfect in many ways, but credit should be given where credit is due.
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Yes, very close to call. It's also interesting to note that in almost all demographics and on almost all fronts Toronto is steadily growing where Chicago isn't.

Also, financial importance is only one of many criteria. Again, if we look at Toronto's media position vs that of Chicago for example you see that Toronto wins hands down (film, publishing, live arts, broadcasting etc), Oprah notwithstanding.
 
ladyscraper said:
I'm not sure you know what a global city is because Toronto is already one and is ranked very highly by every study about it.

read more at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
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afransen said:
I'm skeptical about that ranking. Apparently San Francisco is less significant than Auckland, NZ, the largest city (quite small) in a flyspeck country in the middle of nowhere. Even Sydney is probably overstated. It's not in the same league as HK, Tokyo and Paris.
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Yes, I don't understand why Sydney is ranked so high except maybe they have a lot more influence in Asia. I'm not sure how Auckland being in the middle of nowhere is relevant but I'm thinking maybe this is one of those cases where being a big fish in a small pond is better than being one of the many middle fishes in a big pond.
 
Tacoma said:
I'm not sure how Auckland being in the middle of nowhere is relevant but I'm thinking maybe this is one of those cases where being a big fish in a small pond is better than being one of the many middle fishes in a big pond.
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According to the GaWC study Auckland is an alpha city while Washington D.C. is a beta. I'd love to see the methodology on that one.:confused:
 
With regards to tourism, I'd argue that Toronto has a lot of untapped potential that can make us a global destination. The people in charge of tourism in this city and province are willing to use excuses like the dollar or gas prices or passports and not do anything about it. Their way of countering was to promote staycations, which is fine for the tourism sector because whether someone is from Paris Ontario or Paris France it's till a customer, but it doesn't bring any new money into our economy. For those in power, the main goal of tourism should be to turn their (as in other country's) money into our money, and they gave up on that since 9/11. The fact is that tourism is shifting from mass tourism to niche tourism and Toronto is incredibly strong in that area (we have a good mass tourism product but compared to the Eiffel Towers and Statue of Libertys of the world it's hard to compete). I think the "Toronto experience" could vault us into that category of world tourism destinations. There's a lot of work to do to get there, but this city (and really, this province and country) is so awesome that there is such a great foundation there to build upon.
 
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