[LINK] "Stuck in version 1.0"

[rfmcdonald]

Once upon a time, Toronto--the downtown area, at least--was going to have free wireless. That never happened. Now, in the most recent issue of Now Toronto, Joshua Errett takes the city to task.

Standing at the podium at City Hall, Mayor David Miller whips out his BlackBerry, his fingers dance around the keypad, and he faces the crowd.

The most tech-positive politician in Toronto’s history, Miller is usually at ease talking to the normally adoring group gathered in front of him for last November’s Web 2.0 summit.

But this question vexes him: when will Toronto get its own Google Transit map?

After a quick smartphone consult, he’s got a reply.

Google Transit for the TTC, a Toronto version of the much-loved map that puts public transit routes, schedule and service info in an at-your-fingertips format, would be ready in the spring, he said to applause.

For transit enthusiasts and those just wanting to know the quickest route from Chinatown to the St. Lawrence Market, it was about time. The Google partnership is already in place in nearly every other Canadian city with public transportation, from Fredericton to Victoria and Vaughan, just north of Toronto.

Only now, almost a year later, there’s still no map, and it would take another map to retrace the failed promises, starting in 2006.

[. . .]

[Toronto]’s in the world's top 10 in Twittering, in the top 20 in overall Internet use, and has loads of Web start-ups. Tons of small tech conferences like ChangeCamp are held here, with the online activists to go with them. Mozilla, maker of the popular browser Firefox, even has an office in Toronto.

But when it comes to ranking the most cutting-edge cities in the world, T.O. is a pretender – from the failure of city-wide wireless to the absence of big-name Web firms and the lack of work-friendly Internet cafés.

Most importantly, while cities like Vancouver, Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh (of all places) zoom onward to the future, Toronto’s moves toward more participatory city government, using democratizing open-source technology, are snail-like.

Errett suggests that a lack of vision, including the failure to recognize Toronto as a hub of innovation, is responsible. In a related piece, Errett also suggests all kinds of digital role models for Toronto, from Portland to Munich to Singapore.