Welcome to the New Toronto: the most fascinatingly boring city in the world.

[Mystic Point]

The Guardian chimed in with this interesting and accurate report today.

Read

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/...ascinatingly-boring-city-guardian-canada-week

 

[Filip]

Toronto is a great city despite itself....

 

[Johnny Au]

Toronto is a great city. Its inhabitants unfortunately are apathetic.

Toronto wishes to be New York City, but isn't. Toronto fortunately has stuff NYC doesn't have.

 

[James]

I would have to say that was a fair assessment.

 

[boris davenport]

Yes, we are running low on infrastructure .

 

[wild goose chase]

There are a whole lot of Toronto cliche's used in that article -- Toronto is boring, uptight, stable and not risk-taking, Toronto is multicultural and diverse. Toronto is fast-growing and a city of the future. etc. It hits all of the main talking points.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Interesting article in The Star, at this link:

Toronto needs to take one last step to reach civic greatness: James

Toronto needs a greater push toward the next transformational wave of civic improvements. It can invest and grow or slip back to the second tier of cities.

Welcome to Toronto, boom town Canada, fat-cat city with white hot real estate and a magnet of a downtown where condo skyscrapers stretch the limits on every corner.

Office buildings and jobs have returned to the core; so have new hotels. The kids whose parents left for the suburbs are back.

Crime’s down, our profile is up. The Economist says this is the best city in the world to live.

Pearson is growing faster than any big city airport in the world. A population the size of Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver combined is headed to the Toronto region by 2050.

“I believe that Toronto is at one of those very special moments in time,” Mayor John Tory told the board of trade in September. “You can feel it in the air and you can see it in the headlines.”

Yet, the city’s senior bureaucrats beg on the boulevard.

...

Over the past 10 years jobs increased by 160,000 or 12.7 per cent, TTC ridership jumped 26 per cent, value of building permits rose 76 per cent and the amount of office space occupied increased by eight million square feet.

Meanwhile, Toronto emerged as Canada’s only global city — topping several rankings for livability, cost of dong business, city of opportunity and overall attractiveness for business.

With all that going for it, why is the City of Toronto a perennial beggar? What’s the cause of the fiscal dysfunction? What’s the fix? The paradox of Toronto is summed up in five areas:

• Investors and other levels of government get more of the money generated in Toronto than the city government does.

• Toronto ratepayers are the lowest taxed in the region — even though the city has the widest number of taxing tools (obviously untapped) available to it.

• New city attractions and infrastructure are clearly needed to sustain Toronto’s growing global reach and status. But simply maintaining what it has is a costly undertaking, falling short by $33 billion and counting.

• There are no ongoing plans for the new wave of investments, attractions and “wow projects” needed to prop up the city’s ascendant global status.

• Instead of taxing all property owners and spreading the pain around, city council imposes hidden taxes in the form of fees — so much so that since 2010 Toronto Transit Commission users paid four times more in fare increases than the rest of us paid in property tax hikes

...

 

[TrickyRicky]

One thought that I think comes out of the Guardian article is that why does Toronto always feel it needs to defend itself from being labeled boring? Here's a little life secret: boring kicks ass. I think Mayor Tory rocks this vibe. He's like I'm totally boring and establishment and I know it and I'm comfortable with that.

Maybe Toronto needs to grow up and embrace it's boringness. Toronto is one of the most boring, stable, places in the world and that is why it is hard to match as one of the best places to live in the world. Exciting is fun when your are 22, have no idea what loves means, and lean on substance abuse to mask the crippling anxieties you haven't figured out you have yet. Happiness in the entire rest of your life needs a good dose of stability and boringness to create a foundation to help you achieve your dreams.

So I say, Toronto, get out there and rock your boringness.

 

[Bradley Libralesso]

This is Bay and Bloor taken on a weekday at 10:30. Heart of the city and not a soul in site. This is one of those contradictory moments for me, since it happens on a regular basis. I'm outside past 10 and no one is around. If it were any other city I would be scared to be a victim of crime. However, the boringness of Toronto lets me know that I'm safe, because not even the criminals are out this late.

 

[pman]

This is Bay and Bloor taken on a weekday at 10:30. Heart of the city and not a soul in site. This is one of those contradictory moments for me, since it happens on a regular basis. I'm outside past 10 and no one is around. If it were any other city I would be scared to be a victim of crime. However, the boringness of Toronto lets me know that I'm safe, because not even the criminals are out this late.

Given our sub-arctic climate, it's not clear we could ever have much of a street life six months of the year. Add to that our shabby, degraded public realm and it's not surprising that Toronto is so lifeless at most times in most places. It's a pleasure to be a pedestrian in a great city, but by definition that's some other place that does the opposite of what we do in designing, building and maintaining its infrastructure.

 

[Avenue]

This is Bay and Bloor taken on a weekday at 10:30. Heart of the city and not a soul in site.

Yorkville is not the heart of the city.

 

[Bradley Libralesso]

Given our sub-arctic climate, it's not clear we could ever have much of a street life six months of the year. Add to that our shabby, degraded public realm and it's not surprising that Toronto is so lifeless at most times in most places. It's a pleasure to be a pedestrian in a great city, but by definition that's some other place that does the opposite of what we do in designing, building and maintaining its infrastructure.

I agree, Toronto is not built for its weather. It's funny to see the whole city get so surprised when winter comes. But in general we dont design it to be very lively in many places. We design a lot of dead space here.

 

[junctionist]

Bloor Street in Yorkville is unfortunate in that it's dominated by offices and retail stores. Once business hours end and after the clothing stores close, there's no reason to go there. You'll find similar areas in every big city no matter the climate. Go a few blocks north to the side streets of Yorkville with condos, bars, and restaurants, and you'll see some people walking around at that time.

Climate affects people's willingness to go out, but the uses along a street are the biggest factor as to whether it will be "dead" at a certain time. Another factor is the demographics of the residents. The uses are the reasons why there will be people in a certain place at a certain time. Demographics explain the lifestyle that people are more likely to lead. Students are more likely to go for a late night eat or to study somewhere open late. Young professionals like lawyers may be out and about in the late evening after a long day at the office.

There are places where you'll see people walking around in the late evening even on cold weeknights: Yonge Street downtown, Bloor in the Annex, and parts of Queen West, for instance. Toronto has the diversity of lifestyles and uses in various areas that facilitates this vibrancy.

 

[ADRM]

Yeah. If you really think Toronto lacks vibrancy, you need to get out more and frequent different neighbourhoods.

 

[steveintoronto]

Given our sub-arctic climate, it's not clear we could ever have much of a street life six months of the year. Add to that our shabby, degraded public realm and it's not surprising that Toronto is so lifeless at most times in most places. It's a pleasure to be a pedestrian in a great city, but by definition that's some other place that does the opposite of what we do in designing, building and maintaining its infrastructure.

Toronto's climate is far from "sub-Arctic". It is "humid continental" and moderate by Canadian standards.

Here's where "sub-arctic" occurs:

Koppen_World_Map_Hi-Res.png: Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L., and McMahon, T. A. (University of Melbourne) derivative work: Me ne frego (talk) - Koppen_World_Map_Hi-Res.png

Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. Continental Subarctic climates (Dfc, Dwc, Dsc, Dfd, Dwd, Dsd)

As you were, Toronto may not be as exciting as NYC, but it is more exciting in many respects to London, UK. I've lived in all three, and I'm a Brit/Cdn Dual.

A lot depends what you do in life, and what stage you're at. I worked in the technical end of the music industry, and almost all of the talent had long ago left London when I was there for my last work sojourn. The first two weeks were fun, then the routine set-in. London was lonely and miserable. Wots on tele luv?

LA is pretty lame too, unless your form of pretension fits.

A pretty boring article by Marche. Canadians had best learn to get over themselves not getting over themselves. The navel gazing is the most boring part.

We design a lot of dead space here.

They're called 'graveyards' or 'cemeteries'....and yes, Toronto has some wonderful ones, the larger ones are excellent for cycling through or jogging. Unlike many cities, Toronto welcomes well behaved visitors to them. Nuff said on that one.