M II A II R II K
Senior Member
Toronto's lost its top-of-the-world status
September 6, 2010
By Brian French
Read More: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/2010/09/03/15242576.html
Back when my job was to sell Toronto, we used to have visitors just about every week from other cities in the world desperate to learn how to do the things we did the best. The French were particularly fascinated. I remember big shots from Paris Metro wanting to see how we ran such a successful transit system, others who wanted to learn how we built a retractable-roof stadium and another group who marvelled at the CN Tower. We had Russians who wanted to replicate our financial centre towers in Moscow, another group from there who wanted to examine the Stock Exchange, a third that was intrigued by our Keele Landfill and a police chief who wanted to know how we kept people from shooting each other. We had visitors from Malaysia who were interested in our architecture and a group from Cincinnati who were amazed by our mixed-income co-op communities. A group from God-only-remembers-where wanted to examine our archives system and a few others wanted to learn about land use.
But after visits to Boston and Montreal recently, I wondered how many people from other cities visit here now to see what we do well. I know many councillors travel the world to see how other cities are at doing things better than we are. But I haven’t noticed any startling improvements in city living as a result of Kyle Rae’s gallivanting, Adam Giambrone’s foreign adventures or various others trips to China. As if China does anything we should emulate. Certainly David Miller has pulled out all the stops to try and remake Hogtown in the image of his buddy Richard Daly’s Windy City. But I’ve been there, and yes their Millennium Park is nifty, but on the sunny afternoon I was there last summer, only a handful of Chicagoans were enjoying it.
I guess my point is we don’t do anything particularly well enough any more that any city official in his right mind would ever want to come here to learn our secrets. Outside of the recent flurry of pre-election announcements by the TTC as to how they are going to become more user friendly, warm and fuzzy, our transit system hasn’t significantly improved in more than two decades. David Miller’s solution to shipping our solid waste to Michigan was to continue to ship foreign waste to Michigan until we began shipping it to London.
Our public housing system is the perennial winner of the Parkdale Tenants Association Golden Cockroach Award, our new unified zoning bylaw promises to make every neighbourhood resemble either Kingston Road or Royal York Road South and, the last I heard, there is still open gang warfare on many of our streets. The last seven years of Miller leadership has not built a single thing for the city that is better, more innovative or even worthy of global attention. The change coming on Oct. 25 cannot possibly be for the worse.
September 6, 2010
By Brian French
Read More: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/2010/09/03/15242576.html
Back when my job was to sell Toronto, we used to have visitors just about every week from other cities in the world desperate to learn how to do the things we did the best. The French were particularly fascinated. I remember big shots from Paris Metro wanting to see how we ran such a successful transit system, others who wanted to learn how we built a retractable-roof stadium and another group who marvelled at the CN Tower. We had Russians who wanted to replicate our financial centre towers in Moscow, another group from there who wanted to examine the Stock Exchange, a third that was intrigued by our Keele Landfill and a police chief who wanted to know how we kept people from shooting each other. We had visitors from Malaysia who were interested in our architecture and a group from Cincinnati who were amazed by our mixed-income co-op communities. A group from God-only-remembers-where wanted to examine our archives system and a few others wanted to learn about land use.
But after visits to Boston and Montreal recently, I wondered how many people from other cities visit here now to see what we do well. I know many councillors travel the world to see how other cities are at doing things better than we are. But I haven’t noticed any startling improvements in city living as a result of Kyle Rae’s gallivanting, Adam Giambrone’s foreign adventures or various others trips to China. As if China does anything we should emulate. Certainly David Miller has pulled out all the stops to try and remake Hogtown in the image of his buddy Richard Daly’s Windy City. But I’ve been there, and yes their Millennium Park is nifty, but on the sunny afternoon I was there last summer, only a handful of Chicagoans were enjoying it.
I guess my point is we don’t do anything particularly well enough any more that any city official in his right mind would ever want to come here to learn our secrets. Outside of the recent flurry of pre-election announcements by the TTC as to how they are going to become more user friendly, warm and fuzzy, our transit system hasn’t significantly improved in more than two decades. David Miller’s solution to shipping our solid waste to Michigan was to continue to ship foreign waste to Michigan until we began shipping it to London.
Our public housing system is the perennial winner of the Parkdale Tenants Association Golden Cockroach Award, our new unified zoning bylaw promises to make every neighbourhood resemble either Kingston Road or Royal York Road South and, the last I heard, there is still open gang warfare on many of our streets. The last seven years of Miller leadership has not built a single thing for the city that is better, more innovative or even worthy of global attention. The change coming on Oct. 25 cannot possibly be for the worse.
