News   Apr 24, 2024
Aspen Ridge Freehold Townhomes at Crosstown in Master-Planned Community
 356     0 
News   Apr 24, 2024
News Roundup for April 24, 2024
 408     0 
News   Apr 24, 2024
That's Some Arm
 757     1 

Toronto/Chicago comparisons

mistercorporate said:
I agree with adma,

Detroit also had pockets of revitalization and gentrification in its downtown core, it won't be enough to save Chicago. Toronto has already learned all the lessons it can from that city and is actively building the means to achieve them. Chicago meanwhile is on a death spiral, it has an A3 credit rating with a negative outlook and the state of Illinois also has an A3 Moody's credit rating (the lowest credit rating of all US states, even lower than Michigan!). Several ratings agencies signalled their intention to cut the rating further. Crime (which has started to enter the Chicago Loop) and population decline are destroying revenue and the state unfunded pension liabilities are in the $300 billion zone (city unfunded liabilities are around $30 billion, similar to Detroit's bankruptcy inducing level). Expect a Detroit style death spiral in Chicago within 10 years if it hasn't already begun.

Meanwhile, Ontario has a AA2 credit rating and Toronto an AA1 rating (a notch below AAA, the highest).
Click to expand...


Good I agree as well. I wasn't trying to begin a debate about which city is better or which is on a more fiscally sound footing; that is a different forum, this forum started as a straight comparison between Chicago and Toronto. I made a general statement that Toronto could still learn some things from Chicago as a rebuttal to another commenter who stated that we can learn nothing from them as you did in your comment. At no point did I say one city is better or worse than the other, nor did I make it personal such as adma. Why is there so much bellyaching about such a comment? We should learn what we can from any major world class city, and every major world class city has things that we can learn from to make Toronto even better.
 
I agree that every city and every person has something to learn from the other. To suggest otherwise is an unfortunate philosophical perspective. Lessons do not need to be from successes or failures or flow from better examples to worse. For instance many people love Chicago's waterfront museum campus. I admire the institutions, these are amazing world class institutions, but they are an example of how I would not want the City of Toronto planned. Museum campuses are great for suburban student groups and summer tourists but they do nothing in my opinion for the urban fabric.
 
I'm not really sure what lessons could be gleaned from a Toronto-Chicago comparison. Both cities seem to face way different issues.

Chicago, like many US cities, is obviously weighed down by the entrenched mix of racialized poverty, segregation and violence. 500 murders per year is terrifying, and it's even more terrifying that in recent memory it was pushing 1,000. So many parts of the city are more or less out-of bounds from the typical (overwhelmingly white) gentrification cycle, and this can make pretty big chunks seem very depressed and static.

Toronto just doesn't have to worry about that. While we're very diverse, it's not like 1/3 of Toronto belong to a group which has been so thoroughly stigmatized and ostracized as to make ~1/3 of the City inaccessible to the other 2/3rds. We fret about certain 'at risk communities' like Jamaican-Canadians, Somali-Canadians, Urban Aboriginals and such, but while those groups have been stigmatized and suffer from depressed socioeconomic indicators, cumulatively they're a very small part of the City overall.

I'd say Chicago has better 'bones' than Toronto, though. As a result of it being a major American metropolis when Toronto was just a provincial tank town, it definitely feels like a bigger city. It's rapid transit network is more extensive. It's institutions are better (UChicago > UofT, AIC > AGO, MSI > OSC..). It's fun to compare Toronto's Grand Electric to Chicago's Big Star, its inspiration; where Grand Electric is pokey, Big Star is cavernous. I get that a lot of this is subjective, but it definitely seems like a 'bigger' city. A lot of this is just Chicago's luck of being older.

All the structural advantages Chicago has over us get drowned up by the really corrosive socioeconomic division mentioned above though.
 
diminutive said:
I'm not really sure what lessons could be gleaned from a Toronto-Chicago comparison. Both cities seem to face way different issues.

Chicago, like many US cities, is obviously weighed down by the entrenched mix of racialized poverty, segregation and violence. 500 murders per year is terrifying, and it's even more terrifying that in recent memory it was pushing 1,000. So many parts of the city are more or less out-of bounds from the typical (overwhelmingly white) gentrification cycle, and this can make pretty big chunks seem very depressed and static.

Toronto just doesn't have to worry about that. While we're very diverse, it's not like 1/3 of Toronto belong to a group which has been so thoroughly stigmatized and ostracized as to make ~1/3 of the City inaccessible to the other 2/3rds. We fret about certain 'at risk communities' like Jamaican-Canadians, Somali-Canadians, Urban Aboriginals and such, but while those groups have been stigmatized and suffer from depressed socioeconomic indicators, cumulatively they're a very small part of the City overall.

I'd say Chicago has better 'bones' than Toronto, though. As a result of it being a major American metropolis when Toronto was just a provincial tank town, it definitely feels like a bigger city. It's rapid transit network is more extensive. It's institutions are better (UChicago > UofT, AIC > AGO, MSI > OSC..). It's fun to compare Toronto's Grand Electric to Chicago's Big Star, its inspiration; where Grand Electric is pokey, Big Star is cavernous. I get that a lot of this is subjective, but it definitely seems like a 'bigger' city. A lot of this is just Chicago's luck of being older.

All the structural advantages Chicago has over us get drowned up by the really corrosive socioeconomic division mentioned above though.
Click to expand...

I agree with much of the above, but disagree that Chicago's "luck" stems from being older. Chicago, for whatever combination of factors, did enter into a new spirit of architecture and design on a radical level that no other North American city (with the possible exceptions of Boston and LA) ever did. New York is far older than either Chicago or Toronto and is an architectural and planning disaster pretty much from from stem to stern; Mexico City, far older than New York, is an appalling, slum-choked nightmare.

Credit given to Chicago where credit due.
 
Ladies Mile:

Having a good chunk of the city burnt down during the time of technological advances and the height of the Beaux Arts movement certainly helped to heighten expectations and open doors to new possibilities. It is in a way a twisted form of "luck".

AoD
 
mistercorporate said:
Expect a Detroit style death spiral in Chicago within 10 years if it hasn't already begun.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that. Detroit's death spiral has been 50 years in the making, and the downtown almost entirely hollowed out before a few preservation projects have come in in recent years (still an awful lot of parking lots and empty buildings). The Loop, OTOH, is still quite healthy. I was there a couple of months ago. High occupancy rates, lots of high-profile headquarters buildings, not a lot of blight, lots of restoration work. Unlike Detroit, Chicago seems conscious of its architectural heritage and flaunts it (if you're unsure about that, check out the number of tours offered by the CAF). Companies want to be there, and not as some sort of charity project, and new buildings continue to be built there. And despite some recent elevated crime issues, you can still shop high-end stores on the Miracle Mile.

Chicago does have issues around class, race, and the legacy of the machine system (which still operates, although its power has waned) but it has a long way to slide to get to a Detroit level of decay.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Ladies Mile:

Having a good chunk of the city burnt down during the time of technological advances and the height of the Beaux Arts movement certainly helped to heighten expectations and open doors to new possibilities. It is in a way a twisted form of "luck".

AoD
Click to expand...

Interesting point. However, I believe it's because much like today, Toronto did not and does not have a long term plan to build the city as Chicago did following their Great Fire of 1871. Also, Toronto's great fire was in 1904, San Francisco's earthquake and great fire were in 1906, but they had a master plan to rebuild their city and stuck with it as well. When you walk through San Francisco and look at the way the city is laid out, the cohesive architecture, etc., it makes me wonder what Toronto would have looked like if we had stuck with a plan.
 
toronto_the_good said:
Interesting point. However, I believe it's because much like today, Toronto did not and does not have a long term plan to build the city as Chicago did following their Great Fire of 1871. Also, Toronto's great fire was in 1904, San Francisco's earthquake and great fire were in 1906, but they had a master plan to rebuild their city and stuck with it as well. When you walk through San Francisco and look at the way the city is laid out, the cohesive architecture, etc., it makes me wonder what Toronto would have looked like if we had stuck with a plan.
Click to expand...

Yes - I'd also point out that the Beaux Arts only really took off in the Midwest after the 1890s, some 20 years after the fire. The new "Chicago School" was already well established by that time.
 
Ladies Mile said:
One of the stupider comments I've read on this site.
Click to expand...

Indeed it was ... clearly by someone ignorant to the root causes behind the decline of Detroit (from a point of view regarding the cities financials). Chicago's population is very stable, moreover, employment in the core has been going up over the years still ... with a lot of new construction (relative to most other cities).
 
Toronto feels like a frontier town to me, no pedigree and little sense of identity beyond an awesome embrace of diversity... whereas other large cities like Chicago, NYC, San Fran, Montreal, Boston etc. have an aura about them, an identifiable character and mythology that radiates out from them and draws you in with curiosity, warts and all.

Toronto is an immensely pleasant and liveable place in many ways (save transit), yet for all our shiny new condos and booming economy Toronto remains the gangly wallflower at the party that can't get arrested for trying.
 
Tewder said:
Toronto feels like a frontier town to me, no pedigree and little sense of identity beyond an awesome embrace of diversity... whereas other large cities like Chicago, NYC, San Fran, Montreal, Boston etc. have an aura about them, an identifiable character and mythology that radiates out from them and draws you in with curiosity, warts and all.

Toronto is an immensely pleasant and liveable place in many ways (save transit), yet for all our shiny new condos and booming economy Toronto remains the gangly wallflower at the party that can't get arrested for trying.
Click to expand...
Part of the reason for that is Toronto only became the largest city because Montreal was not anymore.

Toronto is a rich peoples city.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top