Our new mayor has got it wrong about city living
Traffic matters, but so does quality of life. The fact Tory missed the point so completely, should give Torontonians pause
Heading into his first full year as mayor of Toronto, John Tory might want to sit down for a moment to ponder why we love the city, not just why we don’t.
A series of recent decisions reveal a chief magistrate unclear about what makes a great city. His confusion between means and ends, between the city as a place to drive through and a place to be causes concern.
Tory’s threat to cancel or move charity and cultural events because they slow traffic is especially troubling because it reveals his failure to understand what cities are about and why we choose to live in them.
In fact, the activities that worry him — festivals, marathons, open streets and the like — are the very reasons people want to be here.
Yes, traffic matters, but so does quality of life. The fact Tory missed the point so completely, and so casually, should give Torontonians pause.
Just as disappointing was his decision to appoint Denzil Minnan-Wong to the board of Waterfront Toronto. The councillor, who dismisses the desire for excellence as wasteful and extravagant, has established himself as a loud, proud and consistent advocate for mediocrity. (What does that say about Tory, whom Minnan-Wong has long supported?)
Focused on selected details — most famously the cost of custom-made umbrellas at Sugar Beach — the councillor from Don Valley East practises the sort of philistine conservatism that always finds an audience among the resentful.
For these enemies of urbanity, the city is an obstacle, a streetcar stopping traffic to pick up a passenger, or a pedestrian crossing at the Yonge and Dundas scramble while drivers wait and wait and wait.
Perhaps Tory hopes that by appointing MinnanWong to the waterfront board and naming him deputy mayor he will look tough. “There is a new sheriff in town,” Tory declared after being elected. Clearly he wanted to strike a note of threat. Do what I say, or else. Fair enough; but to what end? The city is undergoing profound transformation. Though we have tried to ignore it, even stop it, Toronto has changed. The community in which Tory’s generation grew up no longer exists, except in their collective memory.
The new city is younger, denser and a lot more sophisticated. The 21st-century urban experience has less to do with commuting than communing. To make congestion the sole measure of a city is outdated and counterproductive.
Tory’s focus on eliminating illegal parking will help; but only marginally. His “major” announcement — that passengers on the King streetcar can now enter through the back doors — was an act of noblesse oblige presented as progressive policy.
Still, we reveal ourselves in small ways. Tory’s decision to leave council’s most objectionable members — from Frances Nunziata to David Shiner — in senior positions reinforces the sense that he’s not just conservative, but an unprogressive conservative.
And like all conservatives, Tory relies on people’s fears. The city costs too much, slows the drive, gets in the way . . . The truth is quite the opposite; without the city, we couldn’t survive. The story of our lives is the story of the city.
Above all, the mayor’s job is to keep his eyes on the big picture, not busy himself micromanaging files about which he knows next to nothing. If he’d paid attention, Tory would, for example, realize that the same Waterfront Toronto has pulled off the impossible and brought life to an industrial wasteland.
Instead, he turns to the class cretin, smiles and takes a bite from the apple he has just been handed. It tastes good, not at all poisonous. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca.