Building a Toronto for the Beautiful People

It’s been twelve years since urban planning guru Richard Florida arrived, to much fanfare, at the University of Toronto.

His arrival coincided with a great awakening among Toronto’s chattering classes as to how “world class” the city had become. The city was hungry for the “creative class” baloney Florida was serving up.

He’s still serving. Check out Sidewalk Labs could make Toronto a world leader in urban tech in today’s Globe and Mail. Richard’s got the roadmap, just released by Alphabet-Google, “that can propel Toronto to the top of the heap…”

“…Sidewalk Labs can be the propellant Toronto needs to become a world leader…” and so forth. We’ve got cutting edge research, we attract the world’s best talent, and there’s a whole lotta catalyzing going on!

It’s all about “Urban Tech,” dontcha know (not to be confused with Turban Tech, although there is some overlap.)

And what’s that?

This new sector involves the fusing of technology and urban living and spans a plethora of emerging industries such as ride-hailing, co-living, co-working, mobility, food delivery, real estate or property tech and construction tech.

Got it? Sounds like if we play our cards right, the Portlands could be ground zero for the global gig economy!

Colour me sceptical, but isn’t this more or less the same happy-talk we’ve heard from Florida all along? While he’s been relentlessly trumpeting the pursuit of global greatness, the average price of a home in Toronto has more than doubled from under $400K to over $800K, the social housing wait-list stretches close to ten hears, “affordable” housing remains much talked about but never built, and the rate of population growth going forward is expected double.

Sounds to me like Florida is planning a city for the beautiful people sitting court-side at a Raptor’s game, not the Uber drivers or the bicycle couriers delivering your shawarma to your co-working space.

No, looks like those folks will be “co-living,” at maybe four or five to a studio rental. What’s not to like?