[URBAN NOTE] "A World-Class Misfortune"

[rfmcdonald]

Andrew Barton, one of several Torontonians of my acquaintance who have left to find their home in Vancouver, notes at his blog that Toronto's insecurities about its global status leave it at a practical disadvantage relative to the British Columbian metropolis. Mass transit, say.

Organizations in Scarborough, one of Toronto's eastern inner suburbs, are jostling for the incipient city-wide light rail plan to be overturned in favor of extending a single subway line into Scarborough, a subway line that would cost billions and doesn't even meet subway ridership levels as it is. Sure, the construction of the subway would mean that underserved areas of the city would get nothing... but Toronto is a world-class city and deserves world-class transit.

That is, without exaggeration, the argument being made by the pro-subway group SAFE - a group which seems to be at odds with reality. They're even agitating for a Finch Avenue subway, something which never existed in any official plan and exists only because a particularly outspoken councillor had no grasp of what was being done[.]

There are some people in Toronto who desperately want to make sure that it's a "world-class" city, though strangely enough the "world-class" option generally seems to be the most expensive of all of them. Boosters use language like "building for the future" or argue that Toronto should be following the example of cities like New York and London - which really gives insight into the world-class mindset, because the only way I can see Toronto becoming equivalent to New York and London involves New York and London ceasing to exist.

Vancouver, it seems, has no such identity crisis. Vancouver knows what it is, and is satisfied with moving forward at its own pace, on its own merits. Like many other things, the ideology of city-building is more relaxed out here. In Toronto, it's maddening - many people there see themselves as living in a city that's just barely not world-class, that it's just too far away to grab, hanging there, tormenting them.

That's no way to build a city.