toronto_the_good
New Member
I agree with adma,
Detroit also had pockets of revitalization and gentrification in its downtown core, it won't be enough to save Chicago. Toronto has already learned all the lessons it can from that city and is actively building the means to achieve them. Chicago meanwhile is on a death spiral, it has an A3 credit rating with a negative outlook and the state of Illinois also has an A3 Moody's credit rating (the lowest credit rating of all US states, even lower than Michigan!). Several ratings agencies signalled their intention to cut the rating further. Crime (which has started to enter the Chicago Loop) and population decline are destroying revenue and the state unfunded pension liabilities are in the $300 billion zone (city unfunded liabilities are around $30 billion, similar to Detroit's bankruptcy inducing level). Expect a Detroit style death spiral in Chicago within 10 years if it hasn't already begun.
Meanwhile, Ontario has a AA2 credit rating and Toronto an AA1 rating (a notch below AAA, the highest).
Good I agree as well. I wasn't trying to begin a debate about which city is better or which is on a more fiscally sound footing; that is a different forum, this forum started as a straight comparison between Chicago and Toronto. I made a general statement that Toronto could still learn some things from Chicago as a rebuttal to another commenter who stated that we can learn nothing from them as you did in your comment. At no point did I say one city is better or worse than the other, nor did I make it personal such as adma. Why is there so much bellyaching about such a comment? We should learn what we can from any major world class city, and every major world class city has things that we can learn from to make Toronto even better.