News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 8.5K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 39K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 4.7K     0 

Olive is off his rocker, but I don't think we should dismiss the increasingly frustrated tone that newspaper columnists are taking about Toronto. I've noticed a marked increase in articles like these and it's probably no accident. While one can't really say that Toronto is on the decline, I get a sense, despite all the construction cranes and new cultural developments, that there is a malaise in town that seems much more insidious and long-term than even the lean Mike Harris years (that's when it was a relatively new phenomenon to us, now I think we're resigned to it). A prof I spoke with who researches Toronto geography and cultural patterns recently mentioned to me that the best years for Toronto are probably behind us. I wondered aloud whether we were in any worse shape today than in, say, 2001 when we had to contend with broken cultural institutions, a ragged TTC, a homeless epidemic, the Tories in Queen's Park and the embarassment of Mel Lastman. He conceded that while there was a governance crisis, Toronto didn't have the kind of political and private sector inertia that seems to afflict the city today. If we were again confronted with the kind of problems that stared us down in 2001, it is unlikely we would get off our duff and have the kind of brief, cultural and civic rennaisance we enjoyed during the middle point of this decade.

Say what you want about the horrendous position Detroit faces right now. If you were wracked by segregation, arcane US governance and tax structures and the near total evaporation of your economy, planting urban farms and letting private investors fund your waterfront redevelopment is pretty heady stuff. It's not inertia. If they wanted bike lanes, a decent public realm and a coordinated regional transit plan, I'm sure they would know how to get it.
 
If he had compared Detroit to Hamilton in his article, say, rather than Toronto there would have been much more of value to discuss...

Hipster's point is well taken, however. Toronto does feel broken in many ways, growing and expanding in spite of itself at somewhat of a reckless pace. The wheels are off the rail, in other words. There are successes and bright spots to be sure but these little victories often seem to get swallowed up in the greater sea change of mediocrity, malaise and apathy. Whether Toronto's better days are behind it may be a little too soon to tell but recent events, including the current race for the mayor's office, do not seem to bode well.
 
No his point, or his profs point, is not well taken at all ... it's based on, well nothing, please enlighten me on how we're worse off then say 2001 ? - what's the logic / facts behind this statement.

To be honest, I can barely comprehend what was written
"Toronto didn't have the kind of political and private sector inertia that seems to afflict the city today"
Prior to this statement, you mentioned the 'governance crisis', is this not political in nature? What is the private sector inertia that afflicts the city today exactly ?

This general shift in attitude that seems to be reflected by the media is not Toronto unique, it can bee seen everywhere, throughout the world really - a more cynical attitude, every since the early 2000's is evident throughout the media in general regarding government, government of any kind.
 
"Better Days" are one of those times that are impossible to know they have arrived until they have passed you by.

I'm not sure I will word the following thoughts correctly or completely. I feel that the civic, cultural and economic boom of the mid-decade geographically and socially represented far too little of the city and in an exclusive and cliquish manner. This has resulted in what I guess you could call inbreeding. Ideas for city building weren't created and debated, only copied and pasted. It worked in some ways at first, but ultimately choked on itself. It's possible that the malaise felt by some is their inability to be further stimulated by consumption from that calcified, saturated cultural market. Look at the cities media and how it has shrunk and declined in quality over this period. Is all of Toronto still debating whether Queen East or Queen West is better? Were they ever? Why was it on the cover of every magazine and paper last month then? There's too many communities on the outside compared to those on the inside. The popularity of Rob Ford is a response to this. I don't imagine people in the inner-suburbs think there has been much of a boom to decline from.
 
Last edited:
What's missing in all of this is any kind of yardstick. What cities are we comparing ourselves with in our current malaise. Other cities are suffering as well.

Oakland is declaring a 'fiscal emergency' so that emergency transit cuts don't have to have an environmental assessment. Chicago combined layoffs and service cuts earlier this year, while admitting it would have a devestating effect on riders. Recent headline about Toronto: "Unexpectedly high ridership fills TTC pockets".

Boston approved the closure of 4 library branches earlier this year. Belfast closed 10. Toronto is planning it's 100th Branch.

The unemployment rate in Spain passed 20% this year. House prices in the US continue their decline several years into the crisis.

It's not like it's all peaches and roses here, but this angst is misplaced. I can only imagine what will happen when the real crisis comes (which I personally believe is coming, but will be shared with many other locations) and we are wandering about with shells of unfinished buildings around us.
 
taal said:
No his point, or his profs point, is not well taken at all ... it's based on, well nothing, please enlighten me on how we're worse off then say 2001 ? - what's the logic / facts behind this statement.

To be honest, I can barely comprehend what was written
"Toronto didn't have the kind of political and private sector inertia that seems to afflict the city today"
Prior to this statement, you mentioned the 'governance crisis', is this not political in nature? What is the private sector inertia that afflicts the city today exactly ?
Click to expand...

There used to be quite a bit of private sector philantropy in Toronto from hospital wings to cultural centres bearing the names of Toronto's business elite. For the rest of us, it was quite a boon. That's dried up now. A lot of other big ticket items were private back then: the GTAA under Lou Turpen turned Pearson from 2 dingy terminals plus T3 into something that's actually world class. Too bad that the same private sector, with public endorsement, can't seem to build the necessary rail link today.

Governance was in crisis because in 2001 provincial politicians were deliberately against us and our mayor was so grossly incomeptent. As critical as I am of David Miller, I don't think he's against us or wholly incompetent; the McGuinty government is probably the best friend Toronto could have in Queen's Park. Still, nothing can get done. In 2001 we recognized there were systemic problems with the state of our transit vehicles and our fraying cultural institutions and by 2006, we had 800 new buses on the road and 4 new, large-scale cultural facilities armed with new vigour. Nowadays our problems seem to be an increasingly bloated public sector (city), spiralling debt, an inability to muster the strength to build necessary bike lanes and a regional transit system that cannot keep up with a metropolitan region that grows by nearly 2% (100,000 people) per year. These issues have supplanted those old ones and yet I see no real movement in any of this.
 
Well, actually, when it comes to transit, I do wallow in despair. When you look at St. Clair, Blue 22, and Transit City, it is to weep.
 
Hipster Duck said:
There used to be quite a bit of private sector philantropy in Toronto from hospital wings to cultural centres bearing the names of Toronto's business elite. For the rest of us, it was quite a boon. That's dried up now. A lot of other big ticket items were private back then: the GTAA under Lou Turpen turned Pearson from 2 dingy terminals plus T3 into something that's actually world class. Too bad that the same private sector, with public endorsement, can't seem to build the necessary rail link today.

Governance was in crisis because in 2001 provincial politicians were deliberately against us and our mayor was so grossly incomeptent. As critical as I am of David Miller, I don't think he's against us or wholly incompetent; the McGuinty government is probably the best friend Toronto could have in Queen's Park. Still, nothing can get done. In 2001 we recognized there were systemic problems with the state of our transit vehicles and our fraying cultural institutions and by 2006, we had 800 new buses on the road and 4 new, large-scale cultural facilities armed with new vigour. Nowadays our problems seem to be an increasingly bloated public sector (city), spiralling debt, an inability to muster the strength to build necessary bike lanes and a regional transit system that cannot keep up with a metropolitan region that grows by nearly 2% (100,000 people) per year. These issues have supplanted those old ones and yet I see no real movement in any of this.
Click to expand...

Transit was plagued with the problems we currently face in 2010 back in 2001 ... that increase in service actually took place more recently, yes the new buses have been phased in since early 2001. There's still a ton philantropy in Toronto, if anything this has increased over the years - have you missed the plethora of articles regarding some of the single largest donations taking place over the last few years. How about the Bell lightbox, The Royal Conservatory from telus ... I can go on. I just don't by this argument.

Bike lanes? Try mentioning that 8 years ago in 2001, you'd be laughed at - yes it's a sad point but the fact these changes are being made is progress and is a good sign.

A bloated government and ever increasing city spending is a somewhat valid point. The somewhat part is due to the fact a lot of this spending has led to large improvements on a variety of fronts ... but yes it's not sustainable.

Just to make it clear, I'm not in any way saying Toronto is without problems today, actually it faces some very large ones - employment growth in the city it self to me is by far the largest - namely growth in the outer 416. But these issues were prevalent in 2001 as well.
 
Hipster Duck said:
Governance was in crisis because in 2001 provincial politicians were deliberately against us and our mayor was so grossly incomeptent. As critical as I am of David Miller, I don't think he's against us or wholly incompetent; the McGuinty government is probably the best friend Toronto could have in Queen's Park. Still, nothing can get done. In 2001 we recognized there were systemic problems with the state of our transit vehicles and our fraying cultural institutions and by 2006, we had 800 new buses on the road and 4 new, large-scale cultural facilities armed with new vigour. Nowadays our problems seem to be an increasingly bloated public sector (city), spiralling debt, an inability to muster the strength to build necessary bike lanes and a regional transit system that cannot keep up with a metropolitan region that grows by nearly 2% (100,000 people) per year. These issues have supplanted those old ones and yet I see no real movement in any of this.
Click to expand...

Can you tell us how this applies to Toronto any more than the typical North American city? Isn't every state, province, and municipality having unprecedented deficits these days?
 
My personal anecdotal experience in this city goes back to 1995, the year my sister moved to this city. That is a 15 year base-line. I can buy the concept of an incongruency between growth and expectation and delivery of results; however, this notion of decline is laughable. I keep going back to this analogy: when you renovate or say re-decorate your place it is hard to imagine what the previous base-line was, and every new improvement makes the work yet to be done stand-out more in your mind. I'm not just talking about condos or new architectural expressions for cultural institutions. I'm talking about city building from the ground up. I'm talking about people investing in their own homes. I'm talking about an explosion of civic engagement of people organizing new events, charities, neigbhourhood associations, business improvement areas etc. I mean in 1995 this city was a dead zone by 2010 base-line standards. Do we need to question where we are going and how we are failing ourselves and others in this city as we move forward? Yes absolutely! Is Toronto backwards compared to the base-line of some of our peers around the world in any number of individual measures? Yes, absolutely!
 
kettal said:
Can you tell us how this applies to Toronto any more than the typical North American city? Isn't every state, province, and municipality having unprecedented deficits these days?
Click to expand...
From what I've seen in some US cities - and I'm thinking of generally healthy ones here, not the Buffalos and Detroits, things are quite dire fiscally. Many states have these weird laws that say you can't run a deficit. All fine and great in normal times, but in the current economy, the huge decline in tax revenue during a recession (which has hit harder there than here) means that rather than running a short-term deficit, many states (unlike the US federal government) are hacking expenditures, cutting services, and firing staff left, right, and centre. This is also impacting cities.

In the short-term an unprecedented deficit is a good thing.
 
I should hope that not too many people take Mr. Olive's opinions too seriously. Maybe Detroit is attempting to rebuild on a grand scale but that is because they have to. They have no other choice.

I am sure that if Toronto had 80,000 abandoned homes, severe crime, uncontrolled gangs, widespread poverty and unprecidented urban deterioration we would do something like this too. In the mean time, I'd rather live here.
 
nfitz said:
From what I've seen in some US cities - and I'm thinking of generally healthy ones here, not the Buffalos and Detroits, things are quite dire fiscally. Many states have these weird laws that say you can't run a deficit. All fine and great in normal times, but in the current economy, the huge decline in tax revenue during a recession (which has hit harder there than here) means that rather than running a short-term deficit, many states (unlike the US federal government) are hacking expenditures, cutting services, and firing staff left, right, and centre. This is also impacting cities.

In the short-term an unprecedented deficit is a good thing.
Click to expand...

Toronto can't run a deficit either from what I recall, I'm not sure what your getting at.. Have you taken at the state of many supposedly healthy US cities, New York has tones of debt - also like I said, just take a look at some of our neighbors (less Mississauga) York region also caries a high debt load compared to Toronto. Montreal? Wow, that's on a completely different level.

I honestly think Toronto is fine fiscally .. yes we'll need to make some cuts (note that most healthy cities have had to do this the last 3/4 years, we haven't yet) ... our largest problem will be increasing our commerical tax break, plain and simple.

Do other US cities have similar problems, no idea, I think I asked this question a few years ago and didn't get an answer i.e. do other cities face such stiff competition from their regional counterparts (i.e. Vaughn / Markham / Missi / ...) for whatever reason, tax differential in our case for example.
 
savevp said:
I should hope that not too many people take Mr. Olive's opinions too seriously. Maybe Detroit is attempting to rebuild on a grand scale but that is because they have to. They have no other choice.

I am sure that if Toronto had 80,000 abandoned homes, severe crime, uncontrolled gangs, widespread poverty and unprecidented urban deterioration we would do something like this too. In the mean time, I'd rather live here.
Click to expand...

Well obviously. When people speak about cities and decline, I think saying that Detroit has declined from its peak in, say, 1950 is a foregone conclusion. Of all the cities in the developed world, I would say that only Napoli, New Orleans or Belfast might have suffered as much as Detroit.

Toronto, on the other hand, was born with a golden spoon in its mouth: the dominant economic centre of an ascendant middle income country that escaped the global recession relatively unscathed; I think the real tragedy is how much Toronto has failed to capitalize on its relatively good fortune compared to similar cities. It galls me that we have identified our problems that have plagued us for nearly a generation (like, as I said, an inadequate transit system not only for a city of our size, but one that grows by 100,000 people per year) labeled them as priorities, and repetitively failed to act on them. In that sense, I think it's fair game to criticize Toronto for its inaction while praising Detroit for its innovative approach to "dying gently" because the two cities are worlds apart. Detroit would be like the former meth addict who should be celebrated for finally holding down a steady job pumping gas, while Toronto should be lamented as the former Rhodes scholar who still hasn't made partner at his Bay St. law firm after 20 years.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top