Urban/Suburban/Rural – davidhadwen's website

“How Toronto Lost Its Groove” John Lorinc’s Toronto Mega-Take 10+ Years Later

“Yet in Toronto… well, Torontonians complain endlessly about congestion but refuse to give their political leaders the tools to do anything about it. They boast about the city’s ethnic diversity but don’t much mind if immigrants are warehoused in vertical ghettos. They aspire to live in a creative-class city with serious cultural ambitions, but only if they can pay Walmart prices.”

Gridlock and congestion have major costs in lost productivity, no transit improvement so roads “bursting”.
Sprawl continues unchecked, increasing cost of municipal services.
“Should the rest of Canada care? Yes, because the GTA is the country’s economic hub, accounting for one-fifth of its gross domestic product; New York, by contrast, produces just 3.3 percent of the United States’ national income.”
“…tens of billions more in tax revenues flow out of the GTA than come back in the form of services and public sector investment, which means GTA wealth subsidizes government services across Canada, including health care and social security.”
METRO Toronto was created in 1953 and seen as a success, admired.
Bill Davis established two tier government in the 905 and this was the GTA’s “original mistake” as powerful municipalities compete for public and private investment
In 1994 Ann Golden proposed a Greater Toronto Council for greater services (transportation, waste management, and economic development), leave lesser services for cities (essentially METRO for the GTA).
“Despite Harris’s ambition to reduce government, the GTA remains staggeringly over-governed, with 244 municipal office holders, including twenty-five mayors. By comparison, New York, with 8.3 million residents, is governed by fifty-one councillors, five borough presidents, and just one term-limited mayor.”
The Ontario government is reluctant to create something like a Greater Toronto Council as it doesn’t want a political rival or to be seen as favouring the GTA.
“But in the 1980s and 1990s, as development took off north and west of Toronto, the municipalities of Vaughan and Markham enthusiastically pursued beggar-thy-neighbour tax policies that enticed businesses to avoid or flee Metro and its higher commercial and industrial taxes. The result: a slow but painful decline in Metro’s non-residential tax revenues; growing tracts of fallow land; and fewer jobs in the inner suburbs, such as Scarborough and East York.”
Harris took responsibility for education from municipalities and downloaded transit, housing, parts of welfare.The TTC was aging at this point and province absolved itself, services were cut and plans stopped.
TRBoT study predicted 1billion shortfall by end of decade and suggested cut/priv. vs. new revenue “sales taxes, hotel occupancy levies, and parking fees” suggested by others (David Miller brought in vehicle registration and land transfer taxes).
The Ontario government spent on commuter rail and bus service, municipalities did not invest.
None of what was proposed in the 1975 Metro Toronto Transportation Plan Review was built, Network 2011 (1985) included three new subways. Harris cancelled one and only partially funded another. Harris believed transit should be funded by munis but eventually reversed and funded GTA commuter rail.
Liberals/McGuinty set up Metrolinx in order to take the politics out of transit planning (vs. Greater Vancouver’s TransLink, Metrolinx does not have predictable revenue, relies on provincial govt.)
The argument for David Miller’s Transit City: bring LRTs to suburban areas that could not support subways at 1/10th the total cost. Province, initially on board, scaled back funding and Ford cancelled all lines but one (Eglinton) and said to go underground. The same politicians who approved Transit City approved Ford’ in gutting it’s gutting of it.
The GTA is the world’s most ethnically diverse metro by proportion of foreign born residents, four in ten immigrants to Canada settle in the GTA.
Class polarization: Hulchanski study and decline in middle income neighbourhoods.
The GTA takes the lions share of immigrants but lacks the resources to absorb them.
In the 1970’s a federal Liberal government built co-op housing, in 1980’s Mulroney pulled out, Chretien continued cuts in 1995 and Mike Harris downloaded housing.
Affordable housing now has a “market-oriented, self-financing formula”.
Affordable private rental has not been built so many immigrants live in 1960’s towers “Toronto contains more suburban high-rises than any other North American city”.
A 2006 report called Poverty by Postal Code 2: Vertical Poverty highlighted spartan buildings, disrepair.
The 2005 Greenbelt Act and Places to Grow Act set a target of 40% of new development into urban areas.
“virtually no connection exists between land use and transportation planning”
2011 study: 54% percent of GTA’s 200 million square feet of office space is far beyond the reach of rapid transit.
“The net result: Toronto, like many large North American cities, is now ringed by a huge band of intensely car-dependent suburbs.”
Development charges treated infill and greenfield the same, effectively subsidizing sprawl.
Kyle Rae pushed for expropriation to create Y-D square, politicians and landowners fought the vision but he prevailed. Kyle said/says “we have a culture of no”.
Toronto has a poor public realm, trash cans are bad, trees die.

“Six decades after the beginning of its epochal postwar transformation, it’s fair to say that Toronto has become a very big city, and a somewhat accommodating city, but not a great city—at least not yet. Which is more than a little strange, because the GTA contains an abundance of talent and energy, tremendous wealth, and intimations of a distinctly Canadian cosmopolitanism. What’s lacking is the will to abandon the story Torontonians have always told themselves, which is that they can’t afford the things big cities need and crave, that they mustn’t exercise the political clout that naturally accrues to large urban regions, and that they shouldn’t manage growth in the intelligent way that the twenty-first century requires.”

“Fixing Our Public Transit” with Reece Martin (RMTransit) & Arash Oturkar

These are notes from a panel at Hart House (UofT) hosted by the Hart House Student Social Justice Committee. The speakers are noted transit commentator and Youtuber Reece Martin and Arash Oturkar of CreateTO. Remarks aren’t always specifically attributed and this is not a comprehensive record.

CreateTO is an arms length agency of the city set up to manage it’s real estate portfolio.
Lots of plans: The Planning Act, the Provincial Policy Statement, the Growth Plan, the Official Plan, zoning by-laws and other guidelines.
Transit-supportive development: the growth plan includes MTSA’s (more significant within the Greater Golden Horseshoe). The Building Transit Faster Act includes four priority projects in the GTA (the Scarborough subway, Eglinton, the Ontario Line, Yonge North). Also relevant: the Transit Oriented Communities Act.
Transit Oriented Development (“TOD”) is site specific vs. Transit Oriented Communities which encompass a wider district.
All cities are required to have an official plan. The Toronto official plan identifies MTSAs as sites with major transit nodes in ten minutes walk or 500-800 metres (basically the transit lines already and those coming).
Parking too expensive/wasteful. The cost of underground parking space is 50k to 160k and two parking spaces take up the space of one apartment. The cost of construction is passed on to households (Toronto got rid of parking minimums).
Other planning considerations: Toronto Green Standards (transit and active transportation), RapidTO (Kingston Rd.), Toronto Poverty Reduction, Vision Zero, King Street Transit Priority, Bike Share, ModernTO.
Transit in the downtown core is three times better vs. the inner suburbs.
36% of total emissions are from transportation, 80% of that from private vehicles.
Big picture: TOD is DENSE AND MIXED DEVELOPMENT BY TRANSIT.
Housing Now is investing in city-owned land to create affordable housing.
Bloor-Kipling “Six Points” (Bloor, Dundas, Kipling) was originally built in the 1960’s (car oriented). It’s a bad neighbourhood for pedestrians as areas were/are disconnected. The city intended to connect it (a two decade project of reconfiguration including simplified pedestrian way-finding for ex.).
Redevelopment includes a new Etobicoke Civic Centre, 2300 residential units, an elementary school, district energy. This is in partnership with a private developer.
158 Borough Dr. in Scarborough Centre: a parking lot turned into housing that will have 650 units and a daycare. In walking distance of Eglinton and a future subway station.
Borough Dr. currently has fast vehicle speeds, the aim is to improve public realm (Vision Zero).
Key: parking lots near well served transit stations.
Question on gentrification: the city has been downloaded responsibilities, too much subsidy would be necessary for projects to be 100% affordable, land is very expensive, market units subsidize affordable units.
Question on stakeholders: Reece “you have to piss off David Miller”.
Question on resilience: TTC has reduced service (Reece raises “death spiral”), current head of the TTC ran York transit and has a “Samaritan” view. Ridership is thanks to “good, reliable service”.
Question about politics/voting (including anti-Ford comment and premise that we are the only jurisdiction that pays at fare box vs. subsidy): the TTC is not the only system that relies on fare box recovery (actually a good thing as it means efficiency), the risk with subsidy is that it could subsidize inefficiency. When Doug Ford got elected he didn’t cancel the Finch west LRT.
We’ve needed the “downtown relief line” since the 1970’s but there was a desire push development out of city centre.
Reece: there were bad elements to David Miller’s Transit City plan like Eglinton and Sheppard East. Jane and the waterfront are current go-forward priorities.
Arash: “planners make recommendations, politicians make decisions”, “in this job you can’t be pessimistic”.
Going virtual helped get more diversity to planning consultations.
Suburban ethnic areas like Thistletown and Brampton were surprised they were being consulted (research at TMU).
“A lot of great things have been in our planning documents for decades” but outcomes have been bad as you can twist things, find loopholes etc.
Cars are bad: environment, society, people’s health, the roads.
Jane street corridor: “we should just paint the lanes” ie. give buses their own lanes.
Reece: the MTSA at every single rail stop has the same radius, higher capacity should mean a wider area of impact (we need to be more sophisticated).
Question on TTC safety: the TTC is safer than driving statistically speaking, Toronto’s homicide rate is low. That said, “there’s a lot more anti-social behaviour”.
Reece favours free/low fares for certain groups but not across the board so there’s a price signal as transit is very expensive to build (free fares lead to very short pointless trips).
Overall topic of industrial zones/employment: “loading bay issue” limits options with industrial redesign, “industry sprawl is a huge issue”, in Vancouver there is a huge shortage of industrial land, it’s very expensive to do multilevel industrial.
Question about the desirability of high-rise development in the suburbs: the land value explodes where you build transit, perhaps there is a way to bring strip mall tenants back.
“Suburban retrofit” is a cool concept but there is a permanence to the sprawling environment.
Reece: can we go back to large floor plates? “Vancouverism” is going to be the death of us.
Toronto has way better bus service than most cities.

Transit Oriented Development? Mississauga’s LRT and Condo Building (I Wrote Something)

Suburban styles including the “Marilyn Monroe” buildings at Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario.

I’m interested in what’s called “transit-oriented development”. TOD aims to maximize the amount of walkable urban life near public transit and thereby increase transit ridership by reducing reliance on private vehicles.

On a related note, I recently wrote a guide to the condo projects being built around a light rapid transit project in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga. While it’s written with immediate business interests in mind, it’s still one of the more informative things on the internet about the project.

Urban Geography by Micheal Pacione – Chapter 1 Notes

The distribution of population, the organization of production, the structure of social reproduction and the allocation of power.

Urban geography seeks to explain the distribution of places and the socio-spatial similarities within them.

19thC capitalism was “competitive capitalism”, Fordism (mass production, assembly lines, mass consumption) was “mutually beneficial”, now it’s globalized advanced/disorganized capitalism (a shift to services, esp. financial and niche markets) and each phase has changed the urban environment.

“the new international division of labour in which production is separated geographically from research and development and higher-level management operations”

The command economy created the “socialist city” of urban industrial development and large estates of public housing whereas there are capitalist tendencies to “suburbanisation and social differentiation”.

In the global-local nexus, global forces are held to be more powerful but cities modify and embed globalization in local context.

Globalization has highly uneven impacts and the unevenness is apparent at all levels (booming vs. declining regions, social polarization in one city etc.).

“In labour market terms globalisation is of relevance only for a small minority of workers with the skills necessary to compete in international labour markets”.

“Changes in the relative importance of geographic spaces/scales are reflected in changes in the distribution of power among social groups”.

The “hollowing out of the state thesis” contends that the nation-state has been disempowered relative to the local and supranational.

Completely dead space in the city

This photo of a storefront in downtown Toronto shows completely dead space. The chainlink fencing was recently installed making it newly dead space. I’m sure there’s an urban planning term for this type of situation.

Since the coincidence of Covid-19 and a huge run up in local housing costs, Toronto’s city centre has entered a whole new era of “houselessness” and street life. Basically, Toronto now has an “underclass” in the style of a USA city. This fact is obscured somewhat by a policy of hoteling the houseless.

It’s safe to assume that this fencing is a response to the new social situation. This “Subway” location happens to be across the street from one of the hotels functioning as temporary housing for a bunch of people on the wrong end of things.

Presumably the property owner is entitled to fence in his or her property even if it’s effectively been part of the sidewalk over the long term and even if there are no entrances (or anything else) to enclose.

This particular example of dead space really draws the eye as it’s well lit, in a high trafficked area and features a window into a busy retail location. It’s like a glowing cube.

John Duffy studies #3: Canadian Disagreements (technology, urban/rural and demographics)

Trudeau is trying to be the first “post-Laurentian Liberal”.
Laurentian elite: “The whispers in the common rooms at Queens, the easy murmurings at the Rideau Club, the things that happen in a cafeteria at the Place du Portage civil service benevolent society meeting” that way of doing business is gone.
Trudeau is out of that world/group.
That electoral coalition is out of his mind map. He is more attuned to young people and new Canadian communities.
We’re not even going back to the Martin coalition.
Trudeau: next, post, onward, forward.
A post-Laurentian world need not be a Conservative one.
Harper govt. operates with 21% of all men women and children, Harper governments never feel like a majority (they govern like they have to exert force and pressure in order to pass their agenda).
“The middle class hasn’t got a raise in 25/30 years”.
There’s great potential in the new supply chains for Canada’s traditional manufacturing communities to get back in the game (with support from governments).
The future could look like Japan where young people are working their hearts out to provide for the old. It’s not which Canada you want, it’s which Japan you want.
The question of energy and resources has become big since the 1970’s. We’re going to see more and more issues and political forms pertaining to energy.
This as opposed to the typical 20th century political divide over the role of govt. in the economy (socialism vs. capitalism).
“Technopolitics”: a clash between urban and rural. “Green” appeals to urban voters from progressive parties. Offerings to rural voters from conservatives put the environment on the back seat (Keystone, Gateway, drilling etc.). The vastness of the disagreement between urban and rural implies “the eclipse of the rural value system built around self-reliance”. It’s an argument about modernity.
A scientific/evidence basis for policy is a loose term that the Liberals are running with but it represents something much deeper. The regulation of biotech, the politics of science and technology, the vast explosion of tech etc. are an enormous challenge to our society relative to our tiny attention span.
Cites Shimon Peres: science/tech are fundamentally ungoverned and more important than politics. The young people are all about science/tech and you should become a scientist or entrepreneur if you really want to make a difference.
Politics is catching up one buzzword at a time.
On tech questions there tends to be a pro-producer and a pro-consumer viewpoint (GMO labeled on packaging for ex.). When it comes to technology a rural evangelical voter won’t necessarily take the pro-business, pro-producer argument.
It’s way more important how technology is governed vs. 2% more or less on whatever tax.
Andrew Coyne: It’s about technology understood as an existential question vs. lots of actually technological innovation (which isn’t happening).

Public opinion: the 905 vs. the 416

Note: This is a mini-essay derived from the report titled The 905 vs. the 416: Analysis of Portraits 2017 Regional Differences in Ontario published by the now defunct Mowat Centre. The report came out in 2017. The “905” is General Toronto Area shorthand for the immediate suburbs of Toronto proper.

It’s obvious that Toronto is very different from much of the rest of Ontario. But do Torontonians hold different beliefs compared to other Ontarians? Yes, the cliché is true, Toronto is a bubble.

It goes without saying that opinion in Toronto would differ from rural Ontario but how does Toronto compare to its vote-rich suburbs? As it turns out, quite a bit.

For one thing, residents of the 905 are much more likely to say that government has a negative impact on people’s lives at 47% of respondents with government-friendly Torontonians clocking in at a modest 33%. On a related note, the 905 is much more gung-ho about cutting taxes at 39% of respondents compared to Torontonians who ring in at a more complacent 31%.

Torontonians are inclined to rank climate change as a high priority (53%) whereas 905ers tend not to (39%). Torontonians are more likely to say the national economy is improving at 40% with the 905 registering a more pessimistic 33%. And finally, Torontonians are warmer towards accepting immigrants from conflict zones (56%) vs. the 905 (42%).

These results are all the more interesting when you consider that Toronto is divided between the wealthier areas along subway routes and the “inner suburbs” which—based various political outcomes—have at least as much in common with the 905 as with their bougie civic-fellows.

In conclusion, it seems there is a “bleeding heart” element to Toronto public opinion as compared to the 905. Toronto registers a more positive view of the role of government generally speaking. This is a predictable urban/collective vs. suburban/self-sufficient cleavage.

One last note: a major Conservative pollster and campaign operative is fond of saying that “Conservatives in Toronto are not like Conservatives in the rest of Canada.” So to some extent Toronto’s squishiness is bipartisan.