Toronto

MaRS, College Avenue nr. University, Toronto, ON

The province of Ontario is increasing funding for 6,000 graduate students in high demand areas such as engineering, health, and environmental sciences. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government is set to increase funding for 60,000 total students by 2015-2016.

I think this is a step in the right direction for Ontario and Canada to address the innovation and productivity gaps that plague the economy. AnnaLee Saxenian, author of Regional Advantage, examined the innovation clusters of Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts. Historically, both are areas with strong technical universities that were generously funded during the Cold War, but what emerged in California was a culture of innovation.

“In the 1970’s both the Route 128 complex of Boston and the Silicon Valley were centers of high technology industry, but by the 1980’s the Route 128 area was stagnating while the Silicon Valley, after experiencing economics shocks, was moving ahead to become the unchallenged global leader in high technology. The difference in the two areas was not in resources or location but in their commercial culture. Route 128 firms tended to be insular and proprietary, whereas the Silicon Valley firms were open and linked by social and economic networks which enabled them to adjust to the vissitudes of market shifts.”

In today’s Toronto Star, an article on a Toronto Board of Trade report cited a need for increased regional coöperation among the economic development entities in the Greater Toronto Area. The report cites the regional transportation planning of Metrolinx as an exemplar of regional planning. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for the development of Toronto as an innovation cluster, but I think the big challenge won’t be in terms of funding, but in terms of creating an innovative localized culture that permeates the regional institutions, including government, higher education, hospitals {in medicine and healthcare}, and business. So, I can see the Ontario Liberals touting plans to integrate their higher education policy with one for regional innovation incubation. The MPP for Toronto Centre, Glen Murray, is the Minister for Research and Innovation, which runs the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE). One on the ONE members is MaRS, an organization designed to bridge science, government, and business, which the Ontario Liberals have committed funding to::

“To continue to foster that environment, Murray announced a $2.25 million commitment over the next three years for MaRS so that it may continue its mandate to foster innovation in Toronto by harnessing expertise from across academic and business sectors to aid in launching and developing companies. MaRS will become one of 14 centres in the province-wide ‘Network of Excellence’ being built to foster innovation.”

Toronto is a confluence of different types of capital and global flows, with high levels of educational attainment, being a landing area for immigration, serving as a financial centre, and being a hub for the culture industries. What I’ve been reading is that much of Canada’s innovation occurs in extraverted industry clusters, which would tend to dilute regional advantages that take advantage of localized networks. The exception being the entertainment and culture industries. What I don’t know is what the business culture is like in innovative sectors in Ontario–is it more like California {informal, open, networked, greater mobility} or Massachusetts {formal, closed, hierarchical, and path dependent} in the 70s and 80s? The stakes are high, given the state of the economy and hopes pinned on innovation for future growth in GDP and jobs, which Murray is keenly aware of::

Vidcap of Jason MacDonald at a G20 Protest, Queen West & Spadina, Toronto, Canada, via impolitical

Notes from North of 49ºN

I was far from the fray two weekends ago when the G20 was in town here in Toronto and I thought the mainstream media was being overly dramatic about the “violence” in the city due to anarchist protesters. On Saturday, the 26th., statements on the news like “Toronto will never be the same” while shots of boarded-up shopfronts on Yonge Street and a police cruiser set ablaze conveyed the message that the city was under siege. More on the cruiser later.

The fact of the matter is that the “destruction” was isolated and targeted at corporate entities, but the lingering fallout will be that of lawsuits and questions pertaining to civil liberties. There were over a thousand detainees stemming from the G20. The Toronto Star {via impolitical} summed things up regarding the detainees and the police use of section 31 {breaching the peace}::

“According to section 31 of the criminal code, officers can arrest anyone found to be ‘committing the breach of the peace or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes is about to join in or renew the breach of peace.’

But according to criminal lawyer Paul Calarco, there is ‘no legitimate basis’ for many of this weekend’s arrests.

‘Wearing a black t-shirt is not any basis for saying reasonable grounds (for arrest),’ he argued. As for arresting peaceful demonstrators en masse, “that is not a proper use of Section 31. That is an intimidation tactic,’ he said.

‘Standing on the sidewalk and exercising your constitutional rights is not a breach of the peace.'”

While some might argue that the G20 protests had the potential to truly get out of hand, the reality was that incidents were isolated. The problem is where is the line drawn with respect to police actions under these circumstances? Should civil liberties be expected to be waived due to extraordinary circumstances and how are these circumstances defined?

One would think that a transit worker in uniform going to work, blocks away from protest activity would be OK, right? Particularly if nothing was “going on”. Wrong. A fare collector spent 36 hours handcuffed in detention for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Gerald Yau heading to work at the Queen’s Park TTC station was tackled and told to stop resisting arrest::

“’I told them I wasn’t resisting arrest, that I was on my way to work. I was in full uniform with TTC shirt, pants, full ID, my employee card, everything,’ Yau said on Wednesday. ‘They said, ‘Really? Well, you’re a prisoner today.’

Moments before, another man had run into him but kept going, Yau said, adding that man was also arrested. There was no protest in sight and not many people in the street, he said.

Berating Yau and swearing at him for being an ’embarrassment’ to the TTC, officers dragged him half a block in handcuffs and shackles and threw him into a paddy wagon, he said.

After a TTC supervisor arrived to vouch for him, he thought he’d be released but was sent to the Eastern Ave. detention centre instead.”

The tactics used by the police bring into sharp focus the lines between public safety and the rights of citizens and visitors to Canada. I tend to agree with Boyd Erman of the Globe & Mail who said the actions of the police give Toronto a black eye::

“But the events of this past weekend have shaken that faith for many. Some of the scenes on Toronto’s streets during the G20 recalled for witnesses those more often associated with dictatorships. There were plainclothes officers snatching people from the midst of seemingly peaceful demonstrations and stuffing them in the back of minivans, before speeding away. Passersby arrested just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were cops busting into homes and pointing guns at innocent people in their own beds. (That’s what one Toronto couple, veterinarians both, claim happened to them when police snuck into the family apartment at 4 a.m. by mistake, then hemmed and hawed when asked to produce a warrant.)

There were police charges at crowds with no warning. (This is a point the Toronto police dispute, but most eyewitness accounts, including those of journalists, are in agreement that warnings were inadequate, inaudible or even non-existent.)

Some showcase. A few broken windows by lawbreaking protesters have, sadly, become expected at these events. But police behaviour like this and the criminalization of civilian dissent is not expected, certainly not in Canada.

None of the criticism of the police absolves all protesters of blame. Both the criminal element who damaged property and taunted police, as well as the many peaceful protesters who nonetheless refused to disavow violence as a tactic, are at the root of the problem.

However, the police must be held to a higher standard. These were the biggest mass arrests in Canadian history, numbering more than 900. There were surely legitimate reasons for some, but the vast numbers of people simply held then released suggests that police simply picked up everyone in sight, a civil libertarian’s nightmare.”

While it might not seem like a big deal that a peaceful protester gets a little bloody from a police shield, the damage is done when it comes to perceptions of proportional use of force. Frankly, it makes Toronto look bush league with a city government worthy of derision, given prior debacles when the city wasn’t able to handle “crises”, such as Mel Lastman’s snowmageddon, when the army was called in to remove the snow. {BTW, I’ll leave it to Rick Mercer to give his un-PC rant about Toronto and the weather}. Sure, nobody expects the Spanish inquisition, but there should be better planning, policies, and procedures in place to deal with crises—that don’t throw civil liberties out the window.

With the luxury of hindsight, this was indeed a debacle and it’s not as if there wasn’t plenty of lead time to prepare for it, including the expectation of Black Bloc activity. There were also plenty of funds to go around. What about the violence and police cruisers set ablaze? Some are saying that they were “bait”, as in props to fuel the media frenzy. Sounds pretty paranoid, right? Well, in Montebello, Québec in August of 2007, a rock-wielding police infiltrator was “outed” at a protest, which was captured on tape and made the rounds on YouTube.

While it may not be surprising that the underground media is stating that the police “staged” the “violence” or at least allowed the “violence” to seem more threatening than it actually was, what might be surprising is that the mainstream media are picking up on this theme. David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen offered this::

“…No one was seriously injured. It would have taken very little traditional police effort to prevent almost all of the property damage that occurred last week. Instead we spent something like a billion dollars in overkill, necessitated by the bureaucratic need to permit violence before awkwardly suppressing it.”

And so it goes…

Song:: Nick Lowe-“So It Goes”

Twitterversion:: [blog] Post-mortem review of G20 #Toronto police actions & civil liberties fallout. #ThickCulture

Sarah Thomson, Toronto Mayoral Candidate

Crossposted on rhizomicon

Notes from north of 49ºN

Last month, the Toronto Star ran an article on the use of social media in Toronto’s mayoral race. This fall’s election will be the first since the proliferation of social media and the wake of Obama’s campaign 2.0. A CTVGlobemedia poll released this week shows that the race is tightening up, as heir apparent George Smitherman {15.9%} was leapfrogged by Rob Ford {17.8} with a 3.1% margin of error and 37.9% undecided.

Now, most of the candidates have embraced social media with various “chiclets”::

for sites like Twitter and YouTube. The “downside” of social media is that it can be hard or impossible to control. This clip of a documentary where Rob Ford gets on the case of a reporter for calling him a “fat f*ck” was making the rounds on YouTube::

Well, first off, this dispels the irksome myth that all Canadians are mild-mannered and polite. How does this video play in the court of public opinion? It’s hard to say. Some might be turned off by Ford’s confrontational style, but it might be “on code” with his feisty approach and accountability stance. Smitherman is no shrinking violet, so it may be interesting if Smitherman and Ford go after each other and voters can see it on YouTube.

I think Twitter offers an interesting mode for engagement. Provincially, here in the Toronto Centre riding, Liberal MPP Glen Murray does a great job of using Twitter to have conversations with constituents. The mayoral candidates should look to Twitter to both engage voters and mobilize supporters, as well as crowdsource ideas to help round-out platforms. A breakdown of the candidates’ Twitter presence follows, in their order in the CTVGlobemedia poll with following/followers/Tweets::

  1. Rob Ford {17.8%} 151/663/256
  2. George Smitherman {15.9%} 1,540/1,609/119
  3. Joe Pantalone {10.1%} 508/591/245
  4. Rocco Rossi {9.1%} 1,019/1,432/732
  5. Sarah Thomson {5.8%} 1,017/1,082/1,066
  6. Giorgio Mammoliti {2.5%} 618/474/ 274

I think it’s important for candidates to follow their followers in order to get the most out of Twitter and the conversations it can foster. Rossi and Thomson are Tweeting frequently and it would be interesting for their campaigns to gauge and analyze how Twitter affects metrics for the various functional areas of the campaign, e.g., volunteering, fundraising, attendance at events, etc.

Song:: XTC-‘Mayor of Simpleton’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Can #Twitter be a gamechanger in #Toronto mayoral race, offering conversations & engagement? #ThickCulture #VoteTO @Prof_K

Image:: BMO Field, Toronto. Artificial turf being removed to prepare for new grass surface. Dec 2009, Toronto Star.

Should taxpayer dollars be used to finance infrastructures like sports stadia? Economists tend to say no. The implication here is that they won’t get built, as its notoriously hard for private entities to finance them. Peter Magowan was able to do it for the San Francisco Giants due to the region being awash in Silicon Valley money in the late 1990s, but it’s unlikely this could happen today.

The City of Toronto was part of a public/private venture that built and managed the Sky Dome {now Rogers Centre}. Sadly, it was a comedy of errors with huge cost overruns that included the building of a luxury hotel and underpricing of luxury skyboxes and advertising rights. The Sky Dome costs mushroomed to $570M CAN in 1989 and the project was saddled with huge debts. Despite the Blue Jays doing well attendancewise and the venue being booked for large concerts and home of the CFL Argonauts, the revenues weren’t enough. By 1994, the Ontario New Democratic Party government, who inherited the financial headaches from the Ontario Liberal government in power before 1990, paid off the debt and sold the venue for $151M to a private consortium. The venue went into bankruptcy protection in 1998 and in 2005, Rogers Communication bought and renamed the facility for $25M. Talk about depreciation.

In contrast, the Major Soccer League’s Toronto FC home, BMO Field cost $62M CAN with $44.8M coming from public sources in another public/private partnership. Built in 2007, BMO Field is now turning a small profit and Toronto FC attendance has been strong, so strong that there’s talk of expanding the 20,500 seat facility. The capacity was restricted when building BMO Field to maintain an intimate setting that was specifically designed for soccer.

Is there a moral to this story? A big part of the equation is realistic expectations of costs/revenues and good management. Nevertheless, even if it may not make “economic sense” to use public money to build these venues {in terms of jobs, tax revenues, increased business activity}, are there other reasons why taxpayer money should be used to build them?

An argument could be made that Toronto is a better city for having BMO Field or the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre, but for different reasons. BMO Field is bringing soccer to a diverse city, full of people who can relate to soccer. The Rogers Centre, like the Air Canada Centre used by the Toronto Maple Leafs {NHL} and Raptors {NBA}, signify Toronto’s place as a city by being a signifier of North American capitalism. The city is the largest in Canada and seventh in North America. Like it or not, being home to major sports teams gives the city status through media exposure and corporate marketing. The Buffalo Bills {NFL} have played games here, hinting that the first non-US NFL franchise may be Toronto and could use Rogers Centre, although there are potential stumbling blocks. The mega concerts can be accommodated. Despite it now being 21 years old, it still is iconic as place-as-spectacle, with its opening roof and downtown locale.

Freud would have had a field day with the opening and closing Sky Dome/Rogers Centre being next to the phallic CN tower.

Does it make sense for cities to invest in stadia? I don’t think it’s strictly an economic decision and why cities still invest in them is better explained by sociology. While public funds can be spend a myriad ways, how they will be spent has everything to do with the local political and economic actors. This book, Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, shows that these decisions to finance stadia can circumvent the will of the people, showing the power of embeddedness.

As for success of these public/private ventures, that’s a managerial issue depending on the circumstances, the terms, oversight, local politics, and a city’s long-term prospects.

Twitterversion:: Should public funding be used 4 sports stadia? A look @ the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre history & the emerging BMO Field story. @Prof_K

Song:: Saint Etienne-“This is Radio Etienne”

Mayoral hopeful Adam Giambrone and partner Sarah McQuarrie are seen at left; at right, Kristen Lucas. From Toronto Star.

Notes from North of 49ºN

This morning, the city of Toronto awoke to a mayoral candidate sex scandal that is likely to have zero effect on the outcome, given the strength of the frontrunner, George Smitherman. The Toronto Star had an article on how a woman came forward with text messages of a sexual nature and allegations that she had an affair with mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone, the Toronto Transit Commission chairman and City Councillor. Giambrone has a long-time girlfriend, Sarah McQuarrie. The article was full of lurid details, reminding me why I think of the Star as a bastion of hack journalism and often poorly-written articles. In the article, Adam called it a lapse in judgement and apologized to those close to him for the embarrassment his actions will cause them.

What I find interesting is not just how this story plays into the routine morality play of political sex scandals, but also how the press frames them. The above photo was in an article posted within the last 90 minutes on the Star, reporting that Giambrone is staying in the mayoral race. I found it interesting that the photo had images of “the couple” in clean-cut political mode, contrasted with “the other woman,” complete with low-cut blouse.  Here’s the photo from the story that ran this morning, echoing more of the same::

Kristen Lucas, left. Adam Giambrone & Sarah McQuarrie, right. Carlos Osorio, Toronto Star Staff

The Toronto Star might think I’m full of it {along with others}, but I think these photos are meant to reinforce, with a visual rhetoric, a specific normative political narrative with the intent of selling papers and fueling pageviews. WJT Mitchell wrote about “what do pictures want?” a few years back. These images attempt to simultaneously evoke an emotional response from us along with a judgment, as well as reinforce a narrative of our politicians.

The Torontoist had a good point by saying that this story is telling of our political culture.  They also question the correlation between one’s private life and the ability to be a good public servant. I have no idea what the truth is in this story, but I have three points to make::

  1. If politicians are to be held to a high moral standard, why not all persons in positions of power? If a boss has an affair, should that be unequivocal grounds for termination?
  2. Doesn’t this scrutiny of politician’s private lives, given how technology is eroding privacy, set a precedent for all of our lives to be potentially in the public sphere?
  3. Doesn’t this scrutiny incentivize more bad behaviours, as in the case of John Edwards who not only had an affair, but went to great lengths to cover it up.

Does this preclude a mainstream politician who is a “player” or polyamorous? I think it does. And the Star will ensure we get out collective fill of any lurid details or allegations of “deviance” to express our collective outrage, just like in Victorian times, when “smut” was published as a cautionary warning—and make fistfuls of cash.

Update {10 February 2010, 8:39a EST}::

Giambrone admitted to more affairs and politicians are going on record expressing shock, dismay, and calling for his withdrawal from the mayoral race. It looks like the Toronto Star wasn’t the only one interested in sexy pictures. There was just differences on the definition of sexy. Here’s an excerpt from today’s Globe & Mail::

“At first, Ms. Lucas seemed eager for more exposure. She sent several photos of herself to a local gossip website yesterday morning because she disliked the portraits that appeared in the Star, according to David Robert, manager of drinktheglitter.com. “She wanted sexy pictures of her to be out there,” he said. “She’s like, ‘They’re going to get out anyways.’ “ But she shrank from attention as interest in the scandal swelled. Ms. Lucas swiftly deleted her Facebook and Twitter pages. Mr. Robert said she also disconnected her phone number and shut herself inside her house in East York to escape the media swarm.

“I think this is crazy for her,” he said. “But, my god, I mean, [yesterday] morning she sent Canada’s highest-rated gossip site 10 pictures of herself.”

Twitterversion:: Blog: Trending topic #Giambrone dustup in #Toronto. Star reciting familiar verbal/visual tropes to make $$. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: The Wedding Present-“Unfaithful”

Graphic from the Torontoist by Brian McLachlan
Graphic from the Torontoist by Brian McLachlan

Notes from North of 49ºN

Last Friday, the Torontoist listed its 2009 “Heroes & Villains” and one of the heroes was the mandatory 5¢+ fee for plastic bags {for all retail} that went into effect on June 1st.  A columnist for the Toronto Star, Peter Gorrie, called it a sham, but his arguments are based on a logic that doesn’t account for behavioural change, i.e., a reduction of consumption and use of disposable bags, as people adjust to not using them.  He made several assumptions::

  1. Plastic bags aren’t a major environmental hazard, in terms of garbage load and marine hazards
  2. Manufacturing plastic bags use fewer resources than paper
  3. Plastic bags can be re-used by consumers

He makes the following point, though::

“If the nickel fee makes us more aware the bags do have value and carry a slight environmental price tag, fine. If that prods us to consider using less of everything, even better. At most, though, it’s a potent symbol of how we embrace the trivial instead of doing what’s really required.”

I get where he’s coming from, but I don’t think he’s on the right track.

  1. Diverting petroleum resources away from disposable bags that wind up in landfills or in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by reducing consumption makes both economic and environmental sense.  If the policy in aggregate reduces consumption and conserves finite resources, at the expense of convenience, it’s a win in my book.
  2. This assumes that the policy will not curb demand for disposable bags of all kinds.  I’m not aware of Toronto retailers shifting to paper.
  3. While plastic bags can be re-used for other purposes, does the existence of a secondary use warrant unconstrained continued usage?  This assumes a demand for plastic bags for all purposes that is unyielding.

More interesting is the quote above, as he wants the public to have more real consciousness about reducing consumption, which is a good thing, but feels the tax embraces the trivial.  This is where social science comes in.

Prospect theory is part of the field of economic psychology, developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which serves as a rival theory to the rational expected utility model, which is prevalent in economics.  Prospect theory is richer and more robust {sounds like a coffee} than expected utility, as it has greater explanatory power.  A cornerstone of the theory is how people treat gains and losses differently.  The classic example used is which do you prefer::

  • a 2% credit card surcharge  -or-
  • a 2% cash discount

So, let’s create a hypothetical example.  There’s a camera that a retailer sells at a cash price of $100 and a credit price of $102, i.e., two prices depending on the terms of payment.  Which would consumers prefer::

  • A stated price of $102, but with a cash discount price of $100
  • A stated price of $100, but with a credit card surcharge of $2, so the credit price is $102

These are equivalent scenarios, but most people don’t like the surcharge and prefer the cash discount.  It’s viewed as a “loss” that people will often go to great lengths to avoid and in prospect theory this is called loss aversion.  On the other hand, as gains increase, they are valued less, which fits economists’ “law” of diminishing marginal utility. These perceptions open the door for framing effects.

Prospect Theory graphic, by Kenneth M. Kambara with OmniGraph
Prospect Theory graphic, by Kenneth M. Kambara with OmniGraph

Who cares, it’s just 5¢, right?  The 5¢ charge is effectively a tax on using an economic “bad” or environmental externality and the consumer perceived the loss of wealth to be greater than the 5¢.   It’s the money plus a wee bit of a psychological carrying charge to boot.  The consumer once got bags for “free” {actually the cost was imputed in prices}, but now must either furnish their own bags {diminished convenience} or pay 5¢ per bag {out-of-pocket costs}, so now they are subject to losses.  The loss aversion means the 5¢ can serve as a big disincentive for their use, particularly in a recessionary economy.  One supermarket chain, Metro {Dominion} instituted a 5¢ fee across Ontario and Québec, resulting in a 70% reduction in plastic bag use. What this tells me is that the status quo wasn’t entrenched and the policy is helping to alter behaviours.  What I’m hoping is that policies like this help to reduce the 4B plastic bags handed out annually, just in the province of Ontario.

Whoa, hold the phone.  Why not offer cash back for not using plastic bags?  Looking at the prospect theory graph, refunds for not using plastic bags aren’t perceived to be worth it.  In aggregate, getting a few nickels back is perceived to be worth less than the money, so many consumers may not feel compelled to change their behaviour.

In terms of a plastic bag surcharge policy, the carrot loses to the stick.

Twitterversion:: @Torontoist 2009 “hero,” the 5¢ plastic bag fee, is a policy that follows sound social science theory, based on Nobel laureate’s work. @Prof_K

Song:: The Submarines-“Modern Inventions”

Ken Kirsch-"Caledon Ontario Road"
Ken Kirsch-"Caledon Ontario Road"

Notes from North of 49ºN.

Macleans magazine, like any other, likes to create lists.  I was going through old issues before I pitched them and I spied an article about Canada’s Most Dangerous Cities.  {Here’s the 2009 version}. Caledon, Ontario for two years straight was deemed the safest place in Canada, a town of 58,000 about 40 kilometers/25 miles from Toronto.  I’ve seen Caledon from the air, heading into Toronto’s Pearson Airport, a town on the edge of the greater Toronto area {GTA}, where the 410 freeway peters out on the rural outskirts.   I recall the town where I worked the past few years, Thousand Oaks, CA, was deemed one of the safest places by the FBI, which wasn’t too surprising.  It was fairly affluent, suburban, and homogeneous at 85% white in the 2000 Census.  The 2008 Macleans article went into the reasons why Caledon had such low crime, while crime seemed to be on the rise in neighbouring Brampton.

How safe is Caledon.  According to the Macleans article::

“Of the 100 biggest cities or regions in Canada, Caledon is the safest. In 2006, the most recent year for which there’s annual data, it ranked the lowest —107 per cent below the national average — for a score combining six crimes (murder, sexual assault, breaking and entering, vehicle theft, aggravated assault, and robbery)”.

So, what makes it so “safe”?

  • Strict police
  • Visible police {6,000 hours of foot patrol with 100,000 interactions and only 12 public complaints}
  • “Restorative justice” {which brings suspect and victim together with a mediator instead of a court judge} has been used extensively since 2006 to resolve non-violent incidents, from neighbour disputes to vandalism.
  • Relative wealth:: median income of about $32,900, compared with $24,800 across Ontario.
  • The population is overwhelmingly white and English-speaking {almost half of all residents are third-generation Canadians or more}.

Are problems on the horizon?  The local youth complain of nothing to do and a lack of public transportation makes them feel “stuck” unless they have a driver’s license.  Petty crimes and vandalism are a going concern in Caledon.  The big concern is growth.  Problems with crime in Canada are correlated with areas of growth, where the local infrastructure and support mechanism are outgrown.  Crime has followed the pattern of Canadian growth in the West.  Population in Caledon is expected to increase by 48% by 2021 and “racial fights” are starting to erupt in local schools, where students from nearby Brampton {a town with over 60% first-generation Canadians} are being bussed to.  Also, while robberies in Caledon are rare, Brampton is seeing a spike, so local law enforcement {Caledon’s Ontario Provincial Police} is trying to be proactive with robbery prevention seminars.

What’s the policy implication here?  What’s the relationship between diversity and crime?  Toronto celebrates its diversity {the seal of Toronto has the motto, “diversity our strength”} and enjoys on of the lowest crime rates in North America, so the socioeconomics of cities likely plays a role, along with other factors like geography and demography, not to mention the cultural differences between Canada and the US.

I think what Caledon has now is a sense of “community,” based on a way of life that tends to be more homogeneous and with a slower pace.  Does impending growth threaten this, particularly with the scalability of the public infrastructure.  Specifically, if growth outpaces the capacity of the public infrastructure, could there be a danger of those with the means starting an exodus -or- will those in the community work to strengthen the infrastructure?

A few weeks ago, I was in Sleepy Hollow, NY in Westchester County, less than a hour north of Manhattan.  While on the surface, the Village of Sleepy Hollow seems like a homogeneous suburb on the Hudson, it actually is diverse culturally and socioeconomically.  The “downtown” core is a vibrant shopping area and let’s face it, it’s Sleepy Hollow and has caché as a Washington Irving/Halloween-themed tourist destination, but one gets a sense of community and meaning.  I’m actually interested in visiting Caledon to see if it has what I observed in Sleepy Hollow.  I never got a sense that Thousand Oaks had any sense of community and meaning, but I freely admit I never looked very hard to find it.

Twitterversion:: Dissecting Canada’s “safest” cities. Role of diversity? Scalability public infrastrture? Community/meaning? http://url.ie/2xmk #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Lavender Hill – The Kinks

OpenTO
Brian Gilham map created from OpenTO data

Notes from North of 49ºN

Toronto Mayor David Miller recently unveiled the opening of city datasets on the OpenTO website, ushering in the city’s new era of Gov 2.0.  In less than an hour, the above map of the city’s wards  was generated from the shapefiles.  According to Now Magazine::

“Basically, OpenTO amounts to the city offering up puzzle pieces and the public putting them together. It costs taxpayers next to nothing, creates a wing of local government in which citizens can participate directly, and makes everything more transparent.

At present, not a whole lot of data sets are available. But now that some have been liberated, it won’t be long before others follow.”

While it is true that there isn’t that much data available right now, it’s clear that there are great possibilities here.  The openness of the data will allow crowdsourced analysis of urban questions facing Toronto, which is a hotbed of urbanist activity.  This ostensibly can create more knowledge for use by Toronto’s Planning Department, as well as grassroots activists, non-profits, entrepreneurs, and corporate interests.  The transparency has a flipside.  While transparency of data can serve to “keep the city honest,” in the future, as more data goes online, how will individual citizens’ privacy concerns be addressed?  For example, should data on ex-convicts {or the like} be listed for public use, such as Megan’s Law databases in the United States?  What about data on abandoned property?  While this could assist in redevelopment, it might be used for more nefarious purposes.

While data openness is a hallmark of Web 2.0, in terms of policy, what parameters should be in place?

Twitterversion:: @mayormiller’s OpenTO offers #Toronto’s database access, offering Gov2.0 transparency& crowdsourcing opps. #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2tfw

Song:: The Planners Dream Goes Wrong – The Jam

Crossposted on Rhizomicomm

In 1959, my Chicagoan parents visited Toronto, Ontario and the city left little impression upon them.  Architecturally nondescript, it was seen as an unfortunate product of postwar growth in an uninspired age.  I remembered this and when I was driving from Montréal to Los Angeles in 1992, I didn’t even stop to visit Toronto.  My only recollection of the city was seeing a cluster of highrises in the distance while on a huge swath of a highway with express and collector lanes, the mighty 401.  Living in Toronto over the past few summers, I’ve found the city to be much more fascinating than I gave it credit and a lot has to do with how much of the downtown core is walkable.  I’m reading a book, Walkable City, by Mary Soderstrom that draws heavily on Jane Jacobs, a key urbanist figure here in her adopted Toronto.  Toronto from its inception, started with a grid::

York {Toronto}, 1803
York {Toronto}, 1803

Toronto’s grid, unlike that of New York City’s Manhattan, consisted of short streets and encouraged the development of neighborhoods and community.  José’s blog earlier this year notes how grids are safer than dendritic street patterns.  Jane Jacobs helped to thwart a freeway project, the Spadina Expressway, which would have taken cars from the mighty 401 allowing them access into the heart of the downtown core.  The expressway would have encouraged more sprawled developments outside of the core, but some have argued that Toronto’s anti-car policies have driven development out towards the suburbs, with cheaper land and lower taxes.  One of the outcomes of the Spadina Expressway failure was the creation of the Spadina subway line, which focused development along that corridor.

Flying into Pearson and seeing maps of the Greater Toronto Area, there is no mistake that there is sprawl.  The Toronto I’ve encountered is one of surprises, as the downtown core is walkable and much can be accessed on foot.  While I complain about the local mass transit, the TTC, particularly since it’s often crowded and expensive {cashfare of $2.75 CAN is one of the highest in Canada}, it works.  If you live in the downtown area, one doesn’t need a car and like in Manhattan, a car is often a liability, rather than a convenience.  Nevertheless, I see Toronto as at a city at a crossroads.  Increasingly dependent on automobiles in an era of volatile oil prices, with an infrastructure dependent on gas taxes and registration fees.  Toronto is the largest city in Canada, comparable in size to Boston, but runs the risk of being gridlocked and subject to the “tyranny of the automobile,” as a prescient 1966 Toronto Planning Commission warned.  From a marketing point of view, I see glossy developers’ ads enticing residents with more space and lower prices {and possibly lower taxes} outside of the downtown core, which I’m sure are compelling to many.  Unfortunately, many of these developments aren’t factoring in walking.  While they may be close to mass transit, they often aren’t in vibrant communities with mixed-use {housing and businesses} and adequate amounts of affordable housing.  I’m afraid the thinking is still along the lines of modernity’s arboreal tree, as opposed to the Deleuzean rhizome, but A City Is Not a Tree.

In discussing public financing of infrastructure, a curious split occurs.  When discussing freeways, there’s often a mentality of built more to alleviate the strain.  Like Internet bandwidth, there can never be too much carrying capacity.  The minute one talks about mass-transit, there’s often a discussion of whether or not usage and fare revenues will be sustainable.  Transit-oriented development might be a solution, if increases in property values from proximity from mass transit can be leveraged to finance its construction {an overview of this is here}.

In the past few years, I’ve come across a microculture of mass-transit afficionados.  Some go as far as to create “fantasy” transit maps, particularly of subways or light rail::

Fantasy Toronto Transit Map-2030
Fantasy Toronto Transit Map-2030

I think this stuff needs to get plugged into a Sim-City-like environment, but like any abstraction, it’s only as good as its assumptions.  My utopian vision of Toronto is one with concentrated development along corridors and with a direct connection to Pearson {Airport}.  My idea was a line that went from Pearson to downtown, following Queen in the downtown core, and eventually looping back up to the Bloor-Danforth line.

Any thoughts on your town/city?  Is it walkable?  Does it matter?

Twitterversion:: WalkableCity-#Toronto,Transit& CarCulture.Can TO dvelpmnt be shaped,creating vibrant communities sans cars? http://url.ie/1zuk #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Come To Milton Keynes – The Style Council