cabbagetowner
Active Member
don't forget Shanghai!
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TO is now 2nd most expensive city in North America
- Thread starter wyliepoon
- Start date
don't forget Shanghai!
urbanboom
Active Member
^ I wouldn't label Shanghai (or Toronto for that matter) on the same level of as Tokyo and and NY.
For now, it's very dirty and polluted. It lacks many cultural institutions.
Give the Chinese a couple of years, and then we shall see the glory that is Shanghai. (That is, of course, if water levels don't rise and turn it into Lake Shanghai.)
For now, it's very dirty and polluted. It lacks many cultural institutions.
Give the Chinese a couple of years, and then we shall see the glory that is Shanghai. (That is, of course, if water levels don't rise and turn it into Lake Shanghai.)
Whoaccio
Senior Member
I think the 2004 GaWC survey is more accurate. In particular, it distinguishes different niches. For instance, a city like Brussels is tremendously important as the European capital. Frankfurt is important as the main business center while Milan is more important as a cultural center. The four "big ones" (NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo) are in a league of their own being all things at once. Outside of that though, most cities are important in different ways. Compare Kyoto vs. Osaka. Toronto's claim to fame, as it was, is it's financial, educational and governmental role. UofT and the UHN are a major hot spot of global research on everything from micro biology to old English.
(Just to be clear, I am not saying Toronto is the main global hub of research. It isn't and I am not suggesting that. For my money, that would go to Silicon Valley).
Financially, the TSE, Big Five, Seven Sisters and such make us an important financial hub in the world. In terms of government, Queen's park also gives us some clout as being the capital of 3/5ths of Canada. At the very least, it gives us a leg up on Calgary, Vancouver & Mtl (those provinces made a big mistake in locating their capital outside their main city).
Culturally or historically though, Toronto is about as important as, say, Palermo or Warsaw. Not much to see...
(Just to be clear, I am not saying Toronto is the main global hub of research. It isn't and I am not suggesting that. For my money, that would go to Silicon Valley).
Financially, the TSE, Big Five, Seven Sisters and such make us an important financial hub in the world. In terms of government, Queen's park also gives us some clout as being the capital of 3/5ths of Canada. At the very least, it gives us a leg up on Calgary, Vancouver & Mtl (those provinces made a big mistake in locating their capital outside their main city).
Culturally or historically though, Toronto is about as important as, say, Palermo or Warsaw. Not much to see...
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
^Culturally, Toronto is no slouch, either. This is the city that gave the world luminaries like Northrop Frye, Michael Ondaatje, Glenn Gould, Thomas Homer Dixon, Marshall McLuhan, Deepa Mehta, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Jane Jacobs, etc. This is the city where Hemingway wrote columns, Charlie Parker lost his saxophone, Baryshnikov defected and the Stones got favours from Margaret Trudeau.
It's only an uninteresting city for the Fodor's type of tourist.
It's only an uninteresting city for the Fodor's type of tourist.
waterloowarrior
Senior Member
sorry egotrippin... just trying to spoof the beliefs of some people outside Toronto and a certain pro-road widening UT poster. good rebuttal though! Toronto > Waterloo.
Dichotomy.... here's a post I made from the DVP ramp thread...
do we have 266 KM traffic jams here? at 7:30 PM (toronto to Kingston)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aAwzOeXmIxgk&refer=exclusive
just beat the record of 165 km jam in March
http://www.aboutsaopaulo.com/news/transportation/traffic-jams-in-sao-paulo/
Haven't been there, but clearly from media reports and from the experts in the field it is far worse than Toronto.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/04/14/america/OUKWD-UK-BRAZIL-TRAFFIC.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/brazil
also
Mercer - # 15
http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html
urbanboom
Active Member
^ Well done. You had me fooled.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
I didn't mean to do the typical Canadian self-denigration thing. Toronto does have a culture, but it isn't "global" in scope. If you were to compare it to Milan, Kyoto, Riyadh or Geneva, it just doesn't stack up. One thing I find annoying about Toronto is that it always needs to be explained to foreigners. The point is the city shouldn't need explaining. In true cultural centers, even the most ignorant of tourists doesn't need explaining,
Another thing I can't figure out is that where Toronto does have success, very few people seem to recognize it. I mean, we should be getting big credit among the typical liberal-democratic yuppies that do most of the USA's traveling. We were one of the first cities to legalize gay marriage, pot is de facto legal and we have a relatively cohesive multicultural society (no race riots since the pesky Irish!). If I had to rank liberalness, I would definitely put Toronto ahead of a city like San Francisco (although they have Berkeley...)
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/23/91-san-francisco/
Toronto could be subbed in for any one of those criteria, pretty much.
Archivist
Senior Member
Ah, dichotomy. Let's just look at some of his comments.
In this thread (which is about expensive cities, Toronto is being held up with other 'world class cities' in the world - a label I don't feel is justified, except maybe with respect to traffic, expense and poor planning. This thread started out as a mere reporting of an article about expensive cities, which it is, according to the article. Of course, all such things are relative and our movement up this scale has everything to do with the Canadian dollar (and oil in Alberta) and nothing to do with the city itself. You're really the only one who has brought up the "world class" thing, using it as some kind of straw man to knock down, when it's entirely in your own head. But, here as elsewhere, you could use the opposite of this statistic (were it true) to justify your rants. If Toronto was shown to be extremely cheap by world standards, then I can only assume we would hear from you something like "While other cities prosper and their expense shows that they are in demand as places to live and work, Toronto falls farther and farther behind".
You say, London and Paris are 1,000 years older than Toronto, yet our council will go to great lengths to look at how London is dealing with its downtown! Are we not to look at examples of how successful cities are dealing with common issues? As if every city in the world isn't sticking it's nose into London's congestion zone to see if it might work for them, and well they should be. New York did the same. Let me continue with your counter-arguments: "London has a congestion zone which is innovative and daring, yet Toronto wouldn't even consider something like this!".
You say, [Sao Paulo has] stacked highways, underground highways and even 3 levels of subway in some places. They have buried their roads and built parks on top. I've been there, they also have helipads on many downtown buildings so that the rich can escape the endless traffic horrors of the city, (strangely, I heard chopper a LOT while I was there, and helipads were extremely common). They've buried the river on which they were initially settled so that there is no waterfront in the central city at all, their rich people live behind high gated electrified walls with armed guards in sentry posts standing outside them, and there are huge abandoned skyscrapers dotting the central city right beside the main rail station, abandoned graffiti-covered shells still housing a few unfortunates. (By the way, I quite enjoyed Sao Paulo, but I'm under no illusion that for the majority of people living there, it's a hellish place to be). What's your point here? After making direct comparisons to Sao Paulo, you then say ....
Toronto needs North American solutions because we have more in common with our neighbors to the south than we do those in Sao Paulo or Hong Kong or London, all the while drawing comparisons between us and other cities. In a North American context, Toronto does very well. No city apart from New York has the transit ridership that we do, Los Angeles was recently excited because a single condo was built with stores in the bottom and people actually bought there, and we are essentially in the middle of the rust belt and yet have thrived while so many cities around us have not.
You have some kind of chip on your shoulder. I can speak for myself that I hardly think Toronto is beyond criticism, but the kind of drivel that you write (and write, and write, and write) is quite pointless, thoughtless and ill-directed, and I can only imagine reflects some kind of unhappiness that is all your own, and has little to do with the city I live in.
In this thread (which is about expensive cities, Toronto is being held up with other 'world class cities' in the world - a label I don't feel is justified, except maybe with respect to traffic, expense and poor planning. This thread started out as a mere reporting of an article about expensive cities, which it is, according to the article. Of course, all such things are relative and our movement up this scale has everything to do with the Canadian dollar (and oil in Alberta) and nothing to do with the city itself. You're really the only one who has brought up the "world class" thing, using it as some kind of straw man to knock down, when it's entirely in your own head. But, here as elsewhere, you could use the opposite of this statistic (were it true) to justify your rants. If Toronto was shown to be extremely cheap by world standards, then I can only assume we would hear from you something like "While other cities prosper and their expense shows that they are in demand as places to live and work, Toronto falls farther and farther behind".
You say, London and Paris are 1,000 years older than Toronto, yet our council will go to great lengths to look at how London is dealing with its downtown! Are we not to look at examples of how successful cities are dealing with common issues? As if every city in the world isn't sticking it's nose into London's congestion zone to see if it might work for them, and well they should be. New York did the same. Let me continue with your counter-arguments: "London has a congestion zone which is innovative and daring, yet Toronto wouldn't even consider something like this!".
You say, [Sao Paulo has] stacked highways, underground highways and even 3 levels of subway in some places. They have buried their roads and built parks on top. I've been there, they also have helipads on many downtown buildings so that the rich can escape the endless traffic horrors of the city, (strangely, I heard chopper a LOT while I was there, and helipads were extremely common). They've buried the river on which they were initially settled so that there is no waterfront in the central city at all, their rich people live behind high gated electrified walls with armed guards in sentry posts standing outside them, and there are huge abandoned skyscrapers dotting the central city right beside the main rail station, abandoned graffiti-covered shells still housing a few unfortunates. (By the way, I quite enjoyed Sao Paulo, but I'm under no illusion that for the majority of people living there, it's a hellish place to be). What's your point here? After making direct comparisons to Sao Paulo, you then say ....
Toronto needs North American solutions because we have more in common with our neighbors to the south than we do those in Sao Paulo or Hong Kong or London, all the while drawing comparisons between us and other cities. In a North American context, Toronto does very well. No city apart from New York has the transit ridership that we do, Los Angeles was recently excited because a single condo was built with stores in the bottom and people actually bought there, and we are essentially in the middle of the rust belt and yet have thrived while so many cities around us have not.
You have some kind of chip on your shoulder. I can speak for myself that I hardly think Toronto is beyond criticism, but the kind of drivel that you write (and write, and write, and write) is quite pointless, thoughtless and ill-directed, and I can only imagine reflects some kind of unhappiness that is all your own, and has little to do with the city I live in.
syn
Senior Member
I would say that most tourists in cities they don't feel need to be explained to them have very superficial ideas.
I mean, do most tourists really know Milan? I'd say that most probably feel they already understand it because they apply their stereotypical ideas.
Toronto is not in a powerful country that's constantly portrayed in the mass media, like pretty much any major American city (at least not to the same extent anyways). It also doesn't have a prominent place in world history. Unfamiliarity just comes with the territory.
allabootmatt
Senior Member
...and Margaret Atwood, and Broken Social Scene, and the Barenaked Ladies, and Joni Mitchell, and (much of) The Second City, and...
Toronto has punched way, way above its weight culturally for a century at least, and continues to do so. Maybe if we stuck to promoting that, our tourism marketing would find something less lame to focus on.
Uhhh...Milan, maybe. But Riyadh, Kyoto, and Geneva? Are you serious? Toronto doesn't produce global culture but Riyadh does?
And quick, name something interesting to come out of Geneva since Calvin.
highlife
New Member
Exactly. A poster like Glen, much as I disagree with him, usually makes factual statements that I was hitherto unaware of. All Dichotomy seems capable of is presenting us with his life story ("when I went to Brazil...", "I used to live at Bathurst and Steeles", "this one time I climbed up a fence", "The dog walkers I talk to"). I don't think one "argument" he has presented has been from a non-first person perspective.
uh-oh, flashbacks to miketoronto posts...
gosh, i'm sick of hearing the usual self-loathing, small-minded people out there. We obviously don't compare to a NYC and London and we have our share of problems, but why the hell should we not be proud of what this city has become and where it's heading?
It's the typical inferiority complex among Canadians in general. We have amazing cities across this country and Toronto has the size and strength that can lead the way. But no, we must belittle it, stifle it, and make sure it never achieves its potential...
uh-oh, flashbacks to miketoronto posts...
gosh, i'm sick of hearing the usual self-loathing, small-minded people out there. We obviously don't compare to a NYC and London and we have our share of problems, but why the hell should we not be proud of what this city has become and where it's heading?
It's the typical inferiority complex among Canadians in general. We have amazing cities across this country and Toronto has the size and strength that can lead the way. But no, we must belittle it, stifle it, and make sure it never achieves its potential...
Whoaccio
Senior Member
Look, I'm not trying to say Toronto has no culture, but lets not get into a pissing match about Toronto vs. Riyadh. Fact is, if you are an Arab, Riyadh is an incredibly significant city for a huge number of reasons. Geneva, fyi, housed Lenin and just about everyother revolutionary in Europe and has been the breeding ground for everything from Dadaism, Communism, Existentialism and just about any other ism you can list. Whenever someone gets kicked out of a European country, they usually make their way to Geneva.
I didn't mean to directly compare Toronto to city x. My point was that cities are known and are important for different things. Toronto, for better or worse, is more focused on finance and education. It's not that we don't have a culture, its that its not what we are known for. Fashion? I'm sorry but Torontonians, have absolutely no sense of fashion. History? Not really (i think that can be a bit fo an asset), Music? A lot of bands/actors/comedians come from Toronto, how many stay in Toronto? Art? No.
p.s. Kyoto is more culturally significant than all of Canada. I don't care how many bands come out of Toronto. Rock and Roll isn't as significant as one of some of those temples.
I didn't mean to directly compare Toronto to city x. My point was that cities are known and are important for different things. Toronto, for better or worse, is more focused on finance and education. It's not that we don't have a culture, its that its not what we are known for. Fashion? I'm sorry but Torontonians, have absolutely no sense of fashion. History? Not really (i think that can be a bit fo an asset), Music? A lot of bands/actors/comedians come from Toronto, how many stay in Toronto? Art? No.
p.s. Kyoto is more culturally significant than all of Canada. I don't care how many bands come out of Toronto. Rock and Roll isn't as significant as one of some of those temples.
urbanboom
Active Member
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Explain Riyadh.
I'm sure that many hundreds of years ago these cities didn't have the benefit of a long history so as to be known for their well-knowness.
Cities always need explaining, otherwise what's the point of going to them?
Dichotomy
Banned
Ah, the personal attacks again. I have no chip on my shoulder. I travel the world and proudly show the Canadian pin on my lapel. Only in Canada do I get repeatedly asked, "no, really...what nationality are you?"
Sorry if my personal anecdotes are droll. If we are not the sum of our history, then what are we? I am not fooled by statistics because I have seen first hand how they are used to bludgeon and silence - even when they are wrong.
Who on this board is old enough to remember when the thinking of the day is that tall buildings are bad? Now, suddenly they are good. Is no one but me a tiny bit suspicious as to which agenda is being wielded now?
If I read about Sao Paulo's crime, then live with friends there and see none - what of that? If I hear that Toronto is safe, but have hookers on my corner and a driver calling me fag because I am walking my dog at night at a park that is 'known,' - what of that? (Both of which has happened in the past week.)
If a thread asserts the Steeles W 60 busline built the ugly towers along the Bathurst/Steeles corridor, but I lived there for 4 years when the area was newer and a nice area and know that it was the auto that built that area - what of that?
No, it sounds to more to me that a few posters feel this is 'their' turf and how dare any newbies come along and spoil the sandbox.
So, to get back on topic, this thread is about Toronto being an expensive place to live. And it is. Tourists will tell you how appalled they are at the prices. It's no wonder newcomers are living 8 to an apartment because they can't afford the rent. $2.75 for cash fare when other cities charge $2. I can't argue with the belief that Toronto is expensive. I only chuckle at the other cities on the list, because Toronto certainly does not belong in the same rankings as Moscow or the other 'expensive' cities.