A recent op-ed by Richard Florida for the Toronto Star (that ties into his new book The Great Reset) raises an interesting point for our fine city. Perhaps our success over “the great recession” will actually work against us. As they say, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Is our sucess going to make us complacent while other cities fight to reinvent themselves?
Irrespective, there’s little doubt that big changes are needed in Toronto (as is the case with most cities). Here are 3 ideas, from the op-ed piece, that we firmly agree with:
First, we need to get better at promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, and turning ideas into enterprises. Patent levels across the region reveal that we’re not as innovative as we could be.
“The University of Waterloo is outfitting dorms where students can develop inventions and start businesses a part of their curriculum. Why not extend that opportunity to create something of your own — from new tech start-ups to social enterprise — to our primary and secondary schools?”
Second, we need transit. It should be clear by now that the only way to effectively move large masses of people around a dense metropolis (see Tokyo, London, New York and others) is through a well tuned transit network.
‘Traffic here is a nightmare, and it is getting worse. A recent Board of Trade report ranked Toronto worst of 19 cities worldwide in commuting time. At the Martin Prosperity Institute, we estimate the GTA could gain an additional $3.65 billion in productivity and value added with each five-minute reduction in commutes. We are moving forward with Metrolinx, but funding for Transit City was cut. A world-class city requires world-class transit. There need to be even better connections within the city itself, between our subways, streetcars and buses, and seamless routes to the airport. We also need more incentives to get more people out of their cars and into transit, and that means seriously considering congestion pricing.”
Lastly, Toronto needs to better integrate itself across the region. And one perfect way to accomplish that is through high-speed rail.
“Toronto and its extended region need to grow. Our mega-region, which spans Montreal to Waterloo and across the border to Buffalo and Rochester, is home to 22 million people and generates $530 billion in economic output. But we are dwarfed by the truly gargantuan mega-regions surrounding New York and Chicago, which each produce roughly $2 trillion in economic output annually. Bigger cities and bigger mega-regions have faster metabolisms and bigger markets, and they are more innovative. Greater Toronto has to increase its size and scale fast. But adding more people — even 2 million people by 2031, as the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance anticipates — will not be enough. We have to borrow size by expanding our borders..
We’ll need new infrastructure that can connect the far-flung pieces of our mega-region and make it more of an economically integrated whole. That means investing now in high-speed rail, which would cut travel time from Toronto to Montreal to just over two hours. It would make Waterloo, with its world-class high-tech cluster, a veritable suburb with an easy commute of under a half-hour. High-speed rail could even help reposition ailing Windsor as part of the Greater Toronto economy by cutting travel time to just 90 minutes.”
The case of Windsor is an interesting example. As it stands right now, its economy is entirely dependent upon the sucess of Detroit. Until Detroit comes back, Windsor will likely not come back. We should be taking matters into our own hands and integrating its economy with one that’s poised for growth. Heck, it would likely help Detroit as well. Times like this call for change, not complacency.
Image: Flickr
