Canada’s largest urban region is not what it used to be. In 1969, Jane Jacobs wrote of Toronto, “here is the most hopeful and healthy city in North America, still unmangled, still with options.” A generation later, her view was not so rosy — Toronto had become “a city in crisis, indeed in multiple crises.”
There is a public poverty that has settled across this urban region in the years between Jacobs’ optimism and gloom. It is evident in the shabbiness of our public space and the dilapidation of our infrastructure. Not for all, but for most, it is conspicuous too by the scarcity, sometimes absence, of our infrastructure — from transit to affordable housing to child care.
There is a private poverty too. It is found all over but is concentrated in the expanse between our downtown and the “cities in waiting” in the exurban belt beyond Steeles. In these inner suburbs, a new in-between city has emerged where social and economic problems abound.
This was once the turf of the middle class — when it was substantial enough to occupy this space. Now the middle has been hollowed out and is projected to all but disappear in just over a decade. In its place are seniors with inadequate pensions; newcomers with broken promises in place of recognized credentials; youth without jobs and slim on hope; and workers — yes, workers — in poverty.
There are ways to unwind the vicious spiral that has gripped our city. But our course won’t change without adequate leadership from the federal government. In other G8 countries, governments have become major players in the financial, economic and cultural life of their cities — and it is past time for ours to do the same.
The latest federal budget displays this government’s callous indifference to its role in establishing the conditions necessary for urban centres to succeed. Urban economies build upon communities and infrastructures that support creativity, innovation and productivity. At a minimum, this means national programs for transit, housing and child care. These are the obvious strategies for enhancing our economic competitiveness and supporting, socially, our diverse urban communities.
In place of such urban investment is this budget’s promise to hasten resource development and the infrastructure — explicitly pipelines — to enable its export. Nevermind the objective of post-carbon cities as the oil-centricity of our national economy is more deeply entrenched, our dollar ever more lofty and, correspondingly, the manufacturing base of our urban economies ever more diminished. But this is a budget that continues to expose our manufacturing base not only to this “Dutch Disease” but also to economies with vastly lower wages and weaker employment standards. And, it is into such a remade labour market of our own that this budget will force future seniors for another two years, effective 2023.
This is a budget that continues the transformation of our postwar suburbs into the inner suburbs they are becoming. It makes the projection of the vanished middle-class of our city all the more certain. It justifies Jane Jacobs’ gloom. While we were once “unmangled and healthy,” we are now in crisis. But, says Jacobs, even in that gloom, our problems are not supernatural — they “are the tangible consequences of tangible mistakes.” And in this, she is like us — ever hopeful for our city. These mistakes we will one day fix and make this place a city of spatial justice, economic opportunity and prosperity shared more equally.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Matthew Kellway and Roger Keil
No comments:
Post a Comment