"Half of GTA foreign-born" ... I'm going to be flamed for this but... hence why Torontonians don't care about their city. A general quick questioning of people on the street will yield a not surprising result: Torontonians aren't proud to be Torontonian. Home is somewhere else.
Perhaps that's why we haven't become the great city we can become. Toronto is a place where people live, but they don't call it home. Home is the place where they'll eventually retire to.
I haven't been on UT for a few months and I join this thread late but I couldn't let this go by without my two cents. I'm not going to "flame" you here, we're all entitled to our opinions, but I think there is a flaw in your assumption that civic pride is lacking in Toronto because so many people were born elsewhere.
When I see that half of the people who live here chose this place out of so many other places in the world to move to and start a new life in, if I'm going to assume anything it's that this must be one helluva place for them to choose to raise their families in and to invest that much time and energy into. In fact, many immigrant groups to Toronto (until the 90s) enjoyed higher employment/education rates and standard of living than those born here. These people, including my family and many friends, love this city and can't believe how lucky they were that they came here. My experience is obviously different from yours.
Again drawing from my own experience, when i travel to other Canadian cities I meet a lot of ex-Torontonians, many of whom left because they hated it here. Toronto is not for everyone. But it seems to me that the ones who stayed probably did so for a reason. When you said a "general quick questioning of people on the street will yield a not surprising result: Torontonians aren't proud to be Torontonian"... were you referring to an actual poll? If you were, I'd love to see it. If you weren't, try it and let me know how it goes. I'll even volunteer to do it with you, cuz I'd be curious as hell as to how people would respond. We might both be surprised.
I bash the imperfections and shortcomings of this city all the time. But I'm damn proud to call this place home. And I would wager that many other Toronto critics would say the same thing.
Oh, and since we're disagreeing, I'm not so sure I buy the notion that "home is the place where they'll eventually retire." I know a lot of Snowbirds who would beg to differ.
Toronto is already a great city, dude. And we're headed in the right direction again for the first time in a long time. Lemme know if you wanna do that street poll.