ksun
Senior Member
Beijing receives less snow than Vancouver. Almost negligible.
But it is China. If they want snow, they get snow; if they want clear skies, they get clear skies, even in Beijing.
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- Thread starter Southcore
- Start date
Beijing receives less snow than Vancouver. Almost negligible.
But it is China. If they want snow, they get snow; if they want clear skies, they get clear skies, even in Beijing.
Euphoria
Active Member
What’s most concerning in some naysayers’ posts is the level of self-loathing. For decades, we’ve been hearing about how much better other similar-sized cities are than Toronto (insert Montreal, Boston, San Francisco, etc.). Even though our city has improved hugely over the past twenty years, the reality is that we don’t currently project greatness to the world or see it in ourselves. We split hairs over whether to install public bathrooms in a park and try to do everything on the cheap. You realize it when you visit a city like Chicago, where there’s a commitment to think big. Chicagoans built a majestic waterfront, a grand boulevard in Michigan Avenue, and spectacular, quality architecture. Given Toronto’s projected growth, we have the potential to reach beyond what many other comparable cities have accomplished, but we need a clear vision of what we are. This is about more than moving people from point A to point B and providing cheap services. People are inspired and motivated by ideas. A common complaint of visitors to the city is that Toronto doesn’t know what it wants to be. There have been plans along the way: build a monumental circus (roundabout) at Queen and University – didn’t happen; create public squares and terminuses at the ends of boulevards (Claremont Square and Victoria Memorial Square are survivors of the squares vision. Old City Hall as you look up Bay St., Queen’s Park on University, U of T on Spadina, and St. Mary’s Church on Adelaide are respectable terminuses). Most of the city was planned haphazardly or not at all. Over 20,000 buildings have been demolished in Toronto, many with heritage value (the original Queen St. Provincial Lunatic Asylum, the Temple Building at Bay and Richmond, the Second Empire General Post Office at the terminus of Toronto St., to name a few). We’re still asleep at the wheel (the collapse by neglect of the Georgian Walnut Hall at Shuter and Jarvis, the recent demolition of Stollery’s at Yonge and Bloor).
Toronto has never been better positioned to think big than right now. I worry that, even though we have many athletic facilities already in place to host an Olympics, we’re going to squander the opportunity to host out of fear. If we don’t host by 2024 or 2028 at the latest, those Pan Am facilities will have outlived their usefulness and have to be rebuilt. The chances of generating public support for a more expensive bid at that point would be lower than they are now. It’s foolish to think that senior levels of government will pump the same amount of money into Toronto’s infrastructure without the excuse of an Olympics. Without it, Toronto is one of many cities competing for funds. It’s impossible to quantify what the long-term value of an Olympics would be to tourism or infrastructure, not to mention the health dividends and athletic inspiration to youth and future generations. I’m not sure Torontonians realize how little people outside this city and country know or care about Toronto.
If you want the world to catch on to the incredible changes that have taken place during this protracted development boom in the city, you need ways to bring people and media here. An event on the scale of the Olympics will lift tourism and interest in the city, but more importantly, it will change how we see ourselves. The Port Lands, where the main venue and athletic village would be built, are the last large-scale blank slate for development, the last canvas on which to paint our vision of Toronto. I describe our city to foreigners as a diverse, dynamic, livable city of quaint neighborhoods, gritty warehouses and ultramodern skyscrapers, but I can tell they’re skeptical. If we want to attract investment and the creative class that cities guru Richard Florida says is driving the information economy, we need to get the word out about what Toronto has on offer.
Toronto has never been better positioned to think big than right now. I worry that, even though we have many athletic facilities already in place to host an Olympics, we’re going to squander the opportunity to host out of fear. If we don’t host by 2024 or 2028 at the latest, those Pan Am facilities will have outlived their usefulness and have to be rebuilt. The chances of generating public support for a more expensive bid at that point would be lower than they are now. It’s foolish to think that senior levels of government will pump the same amount of money into Toronto’s infrastructure without the excuse of an Olympics. Without it, Toronto is one of many cities competing for funds. It’s impossible to quantify what the long-term value of an Olympics would be to tourism or infrastructure, not to mention the health dividends and athletic inspiration to youth and future generations. I’m not sure Torontonians realize how little people outside this city and country know or care about Toronto.
If you want the world to catch on to the incredible changes that have taken place during this protracted development boom in the city, you need ways to bring people and media here. An event on the scale of the Olympics will lift tourism and interest in the city, but more importantly, it will change how we see ourselves. The Port Lands, where the main venue and athletic village would be built, are the last large-scale blank slate for development, the last canvas on which to paint our vision of Toronto. I describe our city to foreigners as a diverse, dynamic, livable city of quaint neighborhoods, gritty warehouses and ultramodern skyscrapers, but I can tell they’re skeptical. If we want to attract investment and the creative class that cities guru Richard Florida says is driving the information economy, we need to get the word out about what Toronto has on offer.
animatronic
Senior Member
I think you may be mis-attributing the intentions of the anti-Olympics crowd. Many people who want a better city have looked at the cost benefits analysis and concluded there is nothing there of value. Your Chicago example is a perfect illustration of why you don't need the Olympics to build a great city. In fact, it's a much more credible argument to say that the Olympics get in the way of civic rejuvenation.
Also, Richard Florida is pretty critical of the Olympics.
Euphoria
Active Member
I guess you either see the value in the games or you don't. First off, you have to care about health and athletics. Granted, some Olympics have worked much better than others. Barcelona became a better city after the Olympics. In other cities they probably didn't make much difference. There have to be cost controls on any large projects. As for Florida being critical, I should hope so. I think we should all be critical about all government spending. My point about Chicago is that we have to get away from thinking small and take some risks. Unlike a lot of other cities that are already beautifully built out -- e.g. Rome, Paris, London -- Toronto has a lot of room for beautification and growth in the Portlands and smaller brownfield cites. Let's face it, the city could use an intervention. If you can think of another way for Toronto to get one on the same scale, I'd love to hear it.
animatronic
Senior Member
What does supporting the Olympics have to do with supporting or not supporting health and athletics? That's like saying if you don't like F1 you hate cars.
And the way to do an intervention without the Olympics is to just do the fucking intervention. It's our fault for electing spineless politicians who are too afraid to do what's needed.
Euphoria
Active Member
Yeah well, that's our reality. I can tell you're not interested in the games. It's hard to do a really effective cost - benefit analysis when people have very different ideas of what constitute benefits. To me, not shooting for the games is a lost opportunity. I don't know what to tell you, choose boredom? Build more condos? I just see a lot of the same type of development happening in Toronto. I suppose incrementalism will eventually create the city we want. Maybe your great-grandchildren will get to enjoy it, because we'll all be dead.
Tewder
Senior Member
You're missing Euphoria's point. Chicago has hosted two World Fairs. It hasn't hosted the olympics, yet, but not for lack of trying. The olympics may not be essential for city greatness but grand vision is, and the olympics is certainly about grand vision.
animatronic
Senior Member
So I'm with you right up to the Olympics being a good example of grand vision. They look like a shortcut but really they just end up being a distraction.
diminutive
Active Member
This is a straight up logical fallacy. It's literally the politician's syllogism. Your argument boils down to: 1.)Cities must have grand vision, 2.)the Olympics are grand visions, therefore 3.) we must have the Olympics. Even if all the premises are true (is a party for a bunch of sports nobody cares about for 206 out of every 208 weeks really THAT grand? This isn't rural electrification...) the conclusion doesn't follow.
To expand, the issue is that the arguments middle premise is completely vague. There are an infinite number of grand visions and most of them are probably, on balance, bad. The Spadina Expressway was a grand vision. Lyle Lanley's monorail was a grand vision. What the municipal greatness complex routinely ignores is that 'grand' projects aren't the same as 'worthwhile,' 'beneficial' or 'positive.'
Tewder
Senior Member
Nope. I said to be 'great' cities must have grand vision... and spare us the 'philosophy 101' verbiage. You took a course, we get it.
Not when leveraged strategically:
There can be no leveraging without vision.
Some cities execute better than others, admittedly. Montreal didn't do a great job but Vancouver did, particularly with respect to infrastructure, and received lots of upper-level government funding for it:
Euphoria
Active Member
Yup, and we have a better shot at getting an Olympics than a World's Fair for many reasons: Feds don't support it, World's Fairs were big in the Cold War when countries sold political ideology through pavilions, the public sees value in athletic facilities, etc.
pman
Senior Member
If I understand your argument correctly, it's that hosting the Olympics would prompt the federal and provincial governments to spend more money on Toronto infrastructure, and that Council would allocate that money to useful projects with a positive net benefit, supported by hard data and professional planning. The latter is obviously an illusion. I'm willing to consider the former, but given the overwhelming antipathy towards Toronto in the rest of the country, we'd better get written funding commitments in place before going ahead with a bid.
animatronic
Senior Member
And the Feds, of course, are conveniently in the middle of an election so can't comment on anything until after the 15 Sep letter goes in.
pman
Senior Member
So proponents of a Toronto 2024 bid want us to commit to spending $20 to $25 billion without a federal backstop? And among the legacy infrastructure will be a 70,000 seat stadium which will be basically useless after the games? Are we living on planet batshit or is the real motive here that Paul Godfrey and his pals see this as a way to lure an NFL team with the otherwise-useless stadium after the party is over? Fair enough, we can't be World Class without an NFL team, I guess. I mean, cui bono, because it sure isn't Ma and Pa taxpayer.
diminutive
Active Member
Hey, it's not my fault what you said was objectively wrong! If you don't want 'philosophy 101 verbiage' don't say things which are don't make sense.
Of course, I suppose it's always easier to throw some snark around than to address that you were wrong.
Don't you get it?!? LEVERAGE MAN! BARCELONA! GRAND VISION! 2 billion dollar, 70,000 seat stadiums and Zaha Hadid velodromes are just the price cities have to pay to be great, like Atlanta, Athens and Beijing! Cities renowned the world over for their quality of life. Haven't you seen the SkyDome, our biggest municipal achievement??! We built it in the 80s, and then only a decade later downtown entered a prolonged construction boom! Clearly without the SkyDome then downtown would still be a bunch of parking lots.
To give a more serious answer to cui bono, the Olympics address fundamental insecurities in some people about the quality of their city. It speaks to the whole 'IS TORONTO WORLD CLASS?!?!' 'debate.' Look at the discourse Olympic-supporters engage in. It's all about grand visions, joining the big leagues, 'announcing Toronto,' and other such rhetorical feats of self-aggrandizement. You know, they like spent two weeks in Barcelona and it's, like, way more sophisticated than Toronto, man. They take infrastructure seriously over there. They have grand visions, like a Church which will have taken 140 years to build! Toronto is just a small, provincial town that never gets stuff done on its own. It's exactly like the greatness delusions that takeover Springfield over the monorail.
That's why supporters always dodge the fact that Toronto, despite a putative absence of 'grand vision,' is already a 'world city.' Apparently we are an "Alpha city" in the same tier as Madrid, Chicago, Moscow and such. The only cities higher than us tend to be significantly larger (NYC, LON, LA, BEIJ, SHANGH, TOK ect...). Toronto has to be an undeveloped tank-town for this whole 'we need to be great!' mantra to work, though, so those things are ignored.