We HATE Toronto!

[MetroMan]

I've come to the conclusion that most Torontonians hate their city. Whenever I read comments outside of fan forums like Urban Toronto – where the few who love their city congregate – most people tend to heavily criticize Toronto.

Consider the comments on TheStar's article requesting suggestions for a Toronto nickname resulted in an onslaught of deep negativity.

• "World Class?" You Gotta Be Kidding?
  How about, "A Legend In Its Own Mind."
  
• Toronto is the most boring big city I've ever been to and I've been to just about every major city in the Western world.
  
• Toronto - We Think We're ALL That...
  Yes we believe our own publicity..
  
• "The City of Bans"" TOBan""ToDamBan""millerland""lieberalTO"
  
• How bout building something to name first. We have no waterfront - we have been debating that for decades. The Gardner is a crumbling eye-sore - again debated about for years. We have a terrible gun problem - again debated about for years. There is a garbage issue - nothing done on that front either. The transit is inadiquate for the population using it - debated about for years. Traffic and hi-ways are too crouded - nothing done there either. So with these in mind here is your slogan "Toronto, come here to talk and do nothing"
  
• The city that talks talk talks and does nothing nothing nothing. Honestly, I'm 30 years old and I'm pretty sure that talk of fixing up the waterfront has been around since I was born...
  
• THE CITY THAT SLEEPS EARLY' 'BLAND LAND' 'THE CITY WHERE THUGS CONTROL' 'HOMELESS HEAVEN' 'TORONTO: WHERE PROBLEMS ARE NEVER SOLVED'
  
• With almost daily shootings, murders, and an explosion of crime abetted by socialist politicians despite the best efforts of the police who are shackled by Mayor Miller, Toronto deserves a nickname alright. Danger Zone? Shoot First? Overtaxed? Pothole? Lucky to Get Out Alive? The new ROM would be a good symbol for Toronto; an ugly mixture of styles that don't work after huge cost over runs authorized by a self defined 'world class' mayor and all paid for by you and me, the teeth grinding taxpayer. Yes, indeed; call Toronto the 'Crystal City'.
  
• My humble suggestions for a new Toronto nickname..(1) "The Big Pig" (2) "Bullet City" (3) "Hell's Outer Circle"
  
• Toronto Taxes Unlimited
  
• Toronto is far,too far behind the europians cities and major US cities in everything.Plus, is a high taxed city. Montreal is much better place.
  
• The city that used to hype itself as "world class"
  
• YES THE CITY WITH NO WATERFRONT...
  
• "The city of gun abuse?" "The City that never steps up to the unions" "The city that can't handle the budget" "The city that talks a lot but does no action"
  
• Hopefully we won't get the Pan Am games, just pit to toss money into. If we are such a wonderful city why do we need international event to spark transit and city improvement?
  
• When Mel Lastman was Mayor, Toronto was still a thriving, interesting and CLEAN city - worthy of a catchy slogan. Not anymore. Maybe when Miller Time is over, this once great city will be revived again.
  
• Nightlife in this town is a laughing-stock. Every bar, club, event and private establishment has to stop serving alcohol at 2AM on the dot, not one second after.
  
• How about.....
  ..."The Big Wannabe"?
  

Man... that was disheartening.

The worst part is that I just find people misinformed or simply living in ignorance. I hear people cry out that our city is dangerous (have they been to Philly?), congested (L.A? São Paulo?), derelict (Detroit?), and so on. I can't help but think that they haven't been anywhere outside this city.

Is it that perhaps a considerable majority of people in Toronto are not actually from here? Home is somewhere else. Toronto is where they'll work until they can move back with a retirement. In the meantime, they can hate it.

Why do you think Toronto hates itself with so much passion? How can we change that?

 

[Disparishun]

Why do you think Toronto hates itself with so much passion? How can we change that?

I think that Toronto has enormous potential, and many Torontonians consider and ponder and get excited about that potential. But Toronto also has two things that frustrate that potential, and crush many of those most excited about it -- a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment.

The two things, and they are related, are gridlocked governance and beggar-thy-neighbourism. We have many exciting projects, but they don't happen, and we don't seem to have the governance to make them happen. And one of the reasons they don't happen seems to me -- I apologize for this, and I am not generalizing it to everyone -- to be a great appetite for mobilizing to strike down anything that might benefit someone else, and a correspondingly smaller appetite to mobilize to speak up for anything that might benefit us.

Examples of gridlocked governance: food concessions, subway expansion, the usual stuff. Many of us have grown from childhood to adulthood to parenthood with the same promises of the same public works projects. Why can't we move forward?

Examples of beggar-thy-neighbourism: well, my favourites continue to be the 416-vs-905 silliness and the Ontario schools debate. But I know many will disagree that at least one of those is an example of this...

 

[christiesplits]

The Toronto Star boards are notoriously swamped by the far-right aka the Free Dominion.ca crowd. It seems to be more Miller bashing than TO bashing.

There seems to be a divide based on age and demographics. Everyone has been talking about this TO "civic spirit" that has been fostered over the last few years, seen through Spacing, Torontoist and even UT. However, its clear that this new found love for Toronto is centered around downtown/west end college kids and young adults. They see Toronto as a hotbed of vibrance and endless potential.

Go beyond Lawrence or Jane or Vic Park, and people talk about how the city is crumbling. Particularly middle-age adults who say the city "just isn't what it used to be." They are the 25% of the city who don't just dislike Miller, but what his head on stick.

With that being said, having lived in Hamilton for the past three years, I ensure you that home-grown hatred towards Toronto is not nearly as bad as it is in Hamilton.

 

[taal]

Did you read my thread:

"Wanted: World-class nickname for Toronto"

I was talking about the exact same issues

Maybe we should merge the threads ... although the topic was originally about something different.

 

[taal]

The Toronto Star boards are notoriously swamped by the far-right aka the Free Dominion.ca crowd. It seems to be more Miller bashing than TO bashing.

There seems to be a divide based on age and demographics. Everyone has been talking about this TO "civic spirit" that has been fostered over the last few years, seen through Spacing, Torontoist and even UT. However, its clear that this new found love for Toronto is centered around downtown/west end college kids and young adults. They see Toronto as a hotbed of vibrance and endless potential.

Go beyond Lawrence or Jane or Vic Park, and people talk about how the city is crumbling. Particularly middle-age adults who say the city "just isn't what it used to be." They are the 25% of the city who don't just dislike Miller, but what his head on stick.

With that being said, having lived in Hamilton for the past three years, I ensure you that home-grown hatred towards Toronto is not nearly as bad as it is in Hamilton.

I agree with you ... no matter what the star.ca says about Miller, even if it's good all the comments on the article refer to how bad he is.
It's almost as bad with any Toronto issue, see my post above. Something that should be positive get's turned into "Toronto sucks".

 

[W. K. Lis]

I look at them, on the most part, as constructive criticism.

We would like to improve things, but usually they are in conflict with other people's views or they change over time. For example, we would like to help the poor around us, but don't want them to live around us. Or, we want more parking, but only for ourselves. Or, we want more playgrounds for our kids, but only until they have grown up and then we want to get rid of the playgrounds because of the noise. Or, we want nightclubs, but only until we get a family and then we don't want them.

 

[Archivist]

I agree that there is a strong stance of Toronto-bashing in the city, not only from the quoted sources above, but from everyday conversations I have with people. Politics aside, there seems to be an assumption that it's better in ways that are largely undefined, everywhere else. That's why, here on UrbanToronto and elsewhere, I challenge that notion constantly and attempt to get people to move to a clearer assessment of the city and its merits. The antidote cannot be mindless boosterism, but an acknowledgement of the city's many strengths.

One thing that might make you feel better is that I believe there is more of this that goes on in other cities that we are aware of, since we are not constantly monitoring their discussion groups and media we are less aware of it. I base this from picking up NOW-type magazines when I travel and reading the letters - normally, everything is better somewhere else, not only in Toronto it seems.

Someday, I'd like to go to that city with an extensive and beautiful transit system, amazing waterfront, fantastic arts scene, welcoming friendly people, a city that welcomes strangers and lets them become citizens, traffic is not a problem and where the architecture is always good and the buildings are tall, tall, tall. Haven't been there yet. Too bad Dichotomy was banned, it was entertaining hearing how Sao Paulo met so many of these criteria.

 

[taal]

Still though, maybe it's a grass is always greener on the other side attitude I feel it's worse in Toronto then any (or most) other large city. That goes for within Canada, all of North America for that matter.

When I here people talk about Boston or San Francisco. Locally, Vancouver or Montreal they seem to have a lot more pride.

Does it not make you mad - I'm not sure, some days are worse then others.

Interesting enough, when I've hand conversations with random people due to some even (TTC issue, whether ... so forth) They seem a lot more positive then what I usually see posted on the internet. But still, most people seem to believe it's better anywhere else!

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I think a minority people just plain don't like it here or don't like city living so they refuse to see what Toronto really has offer and they continue to complain bitterly while only noting the negatives. Some struggle to live here and others are simply indifferent. I don't believe most hate Toronto.
I think part of the problem is that we are lacking a true identity and as such suffer from a bit of an inferiority complex by not having one. Just look at all the comparisons on this board to New York, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Chicago etc.
I don't know how to change that, I'd suggest we're still a fairly young city which is still struggling to find it's place in the world. As Toronto continues to grow, as people continue to immigrate here and as neighbourhoods shift & form a sense of belonging hasn't quite taken hold to a degree. Certainly there are well established neighbourhoods but what is lacking is a greater overall or organic sense of belonging to the city as a whole.
Perhaps winning the World Series again or the Stanley cup could lift spirits and bring back some love. Remember the chest pounding back in the 90's when the Jays won the World Series two years in a row? Plenty of people felt pretty smug about our team and our city for a time back then.

 

[taal]

Yes I do!

At the same time I also remember things were different back in the 90s. There was a lot more pride back then even though by all merits we have SO MUCH more to be proud of now.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Somehow, newspaper forums tend to the place where morons congregate. Like honestly, does these individuals, which often complain about nothing but high taxes and the poor even holds a job - like where did they get the time to type so much with so little content?

Of course, their lives are made even more pathetic by the fact that they read newspaper articles that is all but published in the very city that they complain about. Hopefully, they live in the city - at least they'd suffer the very thing that they hate so much.

AoD

 

[Mystic Point]

Toronto can't move forward because there is a very powerful longing -- despite compelling evidence otherwise -- to remain frozen in the past. And in a belief that past planning and architectural decisions were just fine, thank you.

This is not a city that welcomes sophisticated planning, design or architecture like Chicago or New York.

Clearly for Toronto, good enough is good enough, the shabbier, more thoughtless and neglected, the better. It's hard to listen to this argument over and over, but hear it, one does.

Witness the subways, Union Station, the decision to stick a suburban shopping mall downtown ( the Eaton Center ), Yonge Street, Bloor Street, Bay Street, Dundas Street, the Lake Shore, Ontario Place and most of the downtown city parks. All decaying, utterly forgettable and most abandoned.

Without effective planning governance, we rely on the whim and rare inspiration of developers to slap up the occasionally interesting building.

I so want to love Toronto. What went wrong? Is it all the fault of the OMB?

 

[adma]

Somehow, newspaper forums tend to the place where morons congregate. Like honestly, does these individuals, which often complain about nothing but high taxes and the poor even holds a job - like where did they get the time to type so much with so little content?

And it ain't just Toronto--consider the forum/blog comments even in high-minded joints like the New York Times; you'd scarcely know those cities were bulwarks of progressive idealism. Even the "idealists" are all too often old grumblies who are like debased renditions of Jane Jacobs...

 

[PukeGreen]

I read the Toronto Star online mulitiple times per day because it's often the quickest way to get a finger on what's going on here, but I do wish they'd eliminate the comments. They are disproportionately negative, with almost every story twisted in some partisan way and the commenters either bashing the "Fiberals" or Harper, both in roughly equal measure. I'm all for discussion and discourse but that particular forum seems to add no value. There is no discussion; only people shouting angry and unfounded accusations into the void until the comments are closed by the moderators. I try to tell myself that there is a very vocal minority that is expressing an inarticulate anger and that those comments don't represent the majority. I only partly believe it, though.

As for a more general Toronto self-loathing, this is something that has bothered me for years. Every time something negative happens--and bad things are bound to happen sometimes in a city of millions--many people are way too quick to jump onto the "Toronto is going to hell in a handbasket" wagon, as if nothing bad happens anywhere else, or as if Toronto was a peaceful utopian Disney World a few decades ago. All bullshit, of course: if you look at some hard numbers it's pretty clear that our crime rate has been dropping for decades, water and air pollution are dramatically lower than they were in the past, our architecture is improving, and yes, even our transit system has been growing for decades. Shocking, I know.

There are two main factors I think cause (or at least amplify) this phenomenon:

1. Media. 24 hour online newspapers and TV stations like CP24 need to fill a lot of space and time, so they blow every snowstorm, power failure, stabbing or drug-deal-gone-wrong into a flurry of massive hysteria. I had lunch in a pub last week and the TV over the bar ran a loop of the recent subway shooting victim being wheeled into the ambulance almost non-stop; I probably saw it 50 times in less than 2 hours. All for what? Some guy with an injured leg. Sure it should be taken seriously, but man, it's not 9/11 or something.

2. The downtown/suburb divide. Suburbanites love to attack downtown Toronto as a cesspool, even though most of the perceived discrepancies in things like crime or traffic, for example, are simply due to population density. The divide is amplified by the fact that more conservative voters live in the outskirts, and more liberal/left voters live downtown. Both sides are equally guilty of using the geographical divide as a tool to vilify the other side, and it makes it hard for everyone to embrace any given change or improvement. Everything must be a battle because if group A supports something then group B must automatically oppose it and vice-versa. The city suffers.

I've traveled to dozens of other cities, and many of them do seem more exciting than here, but hey when you're on vacation anywhere is exciting. On a more rational level Toronto clearly is an excellent place to live by almost any measurable worldwide standard: cost of living, employment rate, education level, equality, safety, public facilities, health care, transit, food, entertainment, etc. Yes we have problems but surely we can acknowledge our successes even as we work to continually improve.

A good sign is that I see more younger people with city pride than I recall in the past. There's a whole generation of 20-something downtowners and condo buyers that seem to embrace the urban lifestyle and take pride in their city. Look at the popularity of Spacing events, Torontoist, LuminaTO, summer festivals, and the lineups outside the re-opened ROM and AGO. Many of these may "grow out of it" and move to the burbs as they age, but I have a feeling a larger percentage than in the past will be sticking around and making the city proper their lifelong home, and this should help bring continued improvement. A strong identity and open pride may take longer to come. Sites like this help.

 

[adma]

the decision to stick a suburban shopping mall downtown ( the Eaton Center ),

Only the most radical anti-mall zealot would consider the Eaton Centre (watch the spelling! are you a Yank or something?) an instance where Toronto went horribly wrong on the road to shabby neglect--if anything, from an *urban* (not suburban) standpoint, it has succeeded far, far better than virtually anything else of its ilk in North America. It's certainly not an oppressive bunker like the Rideau Centre in Ottawa; nor has it bombed like all those other Eaton Centre wannabes out there. And, thanks to Zeidler, it *was*, by 70s standards, "sophisticated planning, design or architecture" that made headlines all over--maybe even surpassing 70s New York and Chicago on that count...