How does stuff like this make it into the newspaper …
Writing in the Toronto Sun, Sue-Ann Levy weighs in on Toronto’s new economic development initiatives, claiming that:
“But after some questioning, it became pretty clear that Build Toronto has creative guru Richard Florida’s finger prints all over it, not those of the blue-ribbon panel members.”
I guess I should be flattered by my influential “fingerprints,” but I’ve not had a single conversation with anyone inside or outside of city hall about these new initiatives. So it’s a real puzzle to me how they could have gotten there.
And Levy shows a disturbing disregard for factual evidence when she writes that:
“… Toronto is not a world-class city. Even Tel Aviv has us beat by a long shot. I was absolutely amazed at how cosmopolitan that city has become during my recent trip to Israel. Istanbul, Turkey, as I discovered, is also open around the clock.”
Say what? There are many, many empirical rankings of world cities. In writing the Canadian edition of Who’s Your City? my research team and I looked over a whole slew of them to gauge how Toronto and other Canadian cities measure up. Tel Aviv certainly has great cosmopolitan energy, and Istanbul may stay open 24 by 7, but Toronto is way ahead of either as a center for business and talent – ranking roughly among the world’s 10 to 12 most important global cities.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Of course there making this up. The Toronto Sun is nothing more than a tabloid that i wouldn’t use as toilet paper.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Mr. Florida,
I spotted an error in your blog post which evaded your fact-checkers. You accidentally referred to the Toronto Sun as a “newspaper.” That would be incorrect. Over time you’ll learn to spot the warning signs: check for a girl wearing a bikini and a tragic overuse of puns on the front page.
Good luck in the future.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Richard, I visited Toronto at the age of 19 and found myself amazed that people actually lived in the city instead of in the kind of suburbs where I had grown-up. The streets were clean and buzzing with activity. The openness to diversity was incredibly refreshing. I quickly fell in love with Toronto. A few years later, while unsuccessfully attempting to obtain additional testing time on standardized tests due to ADHD, and taking an IQ test related to the same, an IQ examiner ask me: why does property in the City cost more than property in the country? Recalling the trip to Toronto, I quickly responded: GREATER SOCIAL UTILITY!!
I love America! But I also confess a fantastic fondness for Toronto. If you had to leave the States, good choice. Keep making that “invisible” difference, one truly knows he or she has made an impact when his or her influence exceeds the direct-sphere of connections and contacts. You’re out of orbit successful!!
October 1st, 2008 at 2:53 am
Richard, it sounds like Sue-Ann is complimenting you.
You are stated to be a “creative guru”.
The purpose of “Build Toronto” is to make Toronto even more “world-class”, exactly addressing her complaint.
October 1st, 2008 at 5:57 am
I went to Toronto once. Couldn’t find downtown as most of it was underground. Hence it’s a strange type of City compared to most (especially for a Brit). But it was pleasant enough with some nice green/blue infrastructure, some interesting cultural places, and genuinely nice people.
I’ve actually read its “Agenda for Prosperity” document of January 2008. Its vision, uniqueness, measures of success, & self-championing are no different to any other place based regeneration strategy. In addition, its change mechanisms of reorganisation and new structures are typical and expected, as they typically mask deeper issues of culture and governance.
Whether top-down change influences the people and evokes a new culture is debatable. Especially when cities are experiencing more conflict between “the civic” and “the public” and when sustainability is not even referred to in the report. There is a green agenda, but its not the same thing.
Overall its difficult to see how Toronto’s thinking is unique, extraordinary, or world class, but I wish it well.
As for guru’s there is no such thing as truth. Only observations that are sometimes taken as truth. In my experience no two places are alike, and its dangerous to suggest that “best practice” (whatever that means) is transferable from one place to another as an urban panacea. Its like comparing an omelette to a fried egg. It’s the same thing served differently, albeit one is more preferred than the other. So the broad range of measures used to compare Cities don’t really mean much.
In closing I come from a City (Liverpool, UK) that uses the same strapline as Toronto; namely “The world in one city” (see p21 of the report). Both are unique places, but the sameness of the narratives and ideologies of urban regeneration is rather sad, and seems to demean more real and original ideas related to local place, and not any place
October 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Dan – I am rolling on the floor reading your comment. Thank you!
Hayden – I address precisely this issue (of family friendly inner-city neighborhoods) in the forthcoming Canadian issue of Who’s Your City? It is a big, big difference between Canadian and US cities, and that can be quite surprising for Americans, like us.
October 1st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I would be happy to see the catch phrase “world-class” disappear forever. I haven’t read the Toronto plan so i can’t comment on it specifically, but I agree with Colin that too many cities aspire to “world-class” status by copying a mish-mash of initiatives going on elsewhere, many of which aren’t appropriate for that place.
How about simply aiming for “excellence”? Equally vague, yes, but lacking the implication that duplicating ideas from elsewhere is the route to a great city.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Damn right – I’m fed up with the ubiquitous regeneration plans that aim to translate every backwater into a world-beater. Surely primary school kids know that it’s not possible for everyone to be the best (I read an interesting article about how people rate their own driving ability compared to other people, but that’s a different story…).
Rather than for some places (I’m not talking about Toronto) that are facing desperate times to focus on attracting new talent (read: nice, middle class people) by building “aspirational housing”, world-leading “educational establishments” (read: a new building for the old college), a lot of glass and steel office buildings with space for a starbucks, and planting a lot of trees, surely it would be far more efficient and probably more effective to tap into existing talent, work to existing strengths and demands, and try something more organic (of course the sub-text reads: blue-collar/working class/low income/social housing people don’t have any talent, and are unwanted – success comes by getting nice middle class people who eat pastrami).
Of course, this will never happen, as civic leaders won’t get the kudos for saying “let’s do lots of really small things that won’t get any media coverage!” and can’t get their mugs on the telly when they attend the opening of the glass and steel office buildings with the space for starbucks. Or which consultant hired by civic leaders, is going to have the courage to say, after being paid handsomely to come up with the new vision, “what you need to do is… less new office space for big companies who will never arrive, and keep your old, cheap places for new start ups” etc. You can imagine the limp fanfare when that report hits the clients’ desks.
The whole regeneration industry of client (and public) expectations, consultants’ bids and final reports, monitoring, government targets etc is all geared up towards mediocrity, blandness, and inefficiency. It suits the consultants fine, but when everywhere is regenerated to the same level, everywhere gets back to where they started.