Citizens can fight city hall and win, says journalist
A Windsor-born author and journalist who covers and writes on urban affairs in Toronto says few Canadians realize how much power they have to effect change at the municipal level.
“It’s relatively easy to organize a few people and get city hall to listen,” said Shawn Micallef, founding editor of Spacing Magazine and a Toronto Star columnist who also teaches at the University of Toronto.
“Municipal politics are the most responsive.”
Covering Toronto city council, while also keeping tabs on his hometown councillors, is “a bit of an obsession of mine,” said Micallef. Paying attention to what’s going on at city hall, he said, helps an observer understand the backstories of why decisions are made in the political arena closest to citizens.
As part of its free Canada 150th public series with authors, the Windsor Public Library is hosting Micallef on Thursday at 7 p.m. at its central branch (850 Ouellette Ave.). Library board director and Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin will lead Micallef in a discussion on urban affairs. Part of the conversation will be on Micallef ’s newest book, Frontier City — Toronto on the Verge of Greatness.
After that, participants are invited to join Micallef and Bortolin on an informal neighbourhood walkabout. “It’s a stroll to look at what’s there and talk about the potential,” said Micallef, who will host a similar urban exploratory walk on Saturday in Mississauga.
Micallef said he’s been keenly following local discussions on the proposed mega-hospital and on the push by some groups and local leaders for improved urban livability, including the bicycling infrastructure.
“Your mega-hospital issue has a lot of people in Toronto watching,” he said. “In Toronto, we’re blessed with a greenbelt that puts a cap on sprawl.”
“He’s pretty vocal, he’s widely regarded and has a lot of influence, in certain spheres,” Bortolin said of Micallef.
Frontier City is based on campaign trail interviews with municipal candidates the author describes as “city builders.” It describes Toronto — a city “firing on all cylinders” — as being part of a North American renaissance of cities rediscovering the desirability of urban living.
“Being a livable city is an economic advantage,” Micallef writes in his new book.
When times are tough, the money for urban transformation is not there, but the challenge is finding the political will when times are good.
“When things are going well, that’s the time to do it, but that’s also the time you won’t find the political will to do it,” he told the Star. The biggest headache in booming Toronto today is public transit and traffic congestion, he said, something that should have been addressed a generation ago.
In Windsor, he said, “there’s great potential — it’s still a relatively cheap place, with wonderful, walkable neighbourhoods.”
Few of the city builders profiled by Micallef in Frontier City — candidates he describes as having “energized their communities” — were able to topple many of the city hall incumbents they ran against. While the book looks at big ideas and progressive urban vision, it also points out the importance and need of political wannabes to focus on the little things like potholes.
Frontier City is filled with interesting snippets on how new ideas catch on in an urban environment and sometimes bump up against stifling bureaucratic norms and red tape. Toronto, for example, didn’t get its first outdoor patio café until 1963 (La Sem Café), with city hall not knowing how to handle the request, “and public health questioned why anybody would want to eat outside.”