Toronto mayor-elect Olivia Chow speaks to media outside City Hall in Toronto, on June 27.Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
It is an optimistic day in Toronto. The Mayor-elect, Olivia Chow, has pledged to “fix the cracks in the city.” But this will be a tough job: There are many cracks to be fixed.
In her victory speech Monday night, Ms. Chow struck a tone of optimism and ambition. Her Toronto should be “a city strengthened by compassion, not weakened by inequality,” she said.
To create that city, she will need to be both a fighter and a builder.
A fighter, because Toronto must remember how it got into so much trouble. The right has run the city for 13 years now. Toronto’s government has starved itself. Even before the pandemic, the city faced serious fiscal problems, overwhelmed social services and a crumbling transit system.
During the campaign, conservative commentators tried to blame her for the city’s current issues. This is breathtaking in its hypocrisy, but we will hear more of it. Ms. Chow needs to remind everyone that low taxes and a weakened civil service are, in fact, the problem.
She must also work toward building a better city, both symbolically and literally.
Ms. Chow’s Toronto will include a more robust role for government. While the obvious focal points will be expanding the city’s social safety net, Ms. Chow would do well to focus on the physical city as a manifestation and a symbol of this new era.
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Keep the pools open, yes. Fix the cracks in the subway tunnels. But also: Rethink the streets. More open streets programs, like those in Montreal that closed several major arteries to vehicles in the summer months, are a quick and powerful symbol of civic cohesion and progressive urbanism.
Stand up for the public realm. It’s heartening that Ms. Chow has pledged to protect Ontario Place, which is a treasure, from the disastrous plan by Doug Ford, Therme Group and Diamond Schmitt Architects.
Also: Build great new things. When was the last time a city of Toronto building made people excited? The city’s parks, recreation centres, libraries and even office buildings should all be great. They should be symbols of the city’s ambition and competence. Right now, Toronto civic design tends to be parochial and mediocre. A few examples, like the spectacular newly opened Love Park at Queens Quay and York Street, prove that more is possible. The mayor should demand more of that.
Then there is housing. Every major candidate for mayor agreed that the city needs to build much more of it.
While there is no immediate fix, the right way forward is to radically reform planning policy – making it easier to build all sorts of housing, across the city – while pushing to build more social housing. Anything else is a recipe for continued gentrification and displacement. City policy has made an increasingly segregated Toronto. To address inequality in the city, look here.
The politics of housing are complex, and the big test of Ms. Chow’s mayoralty will be how she responds to this issue.
She might begin by questioning some of the first principles of the city’s planning policy. Why are the city’s targets for growth not higher? Why is it illegal to build apartments in some of the most central places in Toronto? Why does the city privilege the quality of life of multimillionaire homeowners rather than making room for new people?
There are no good answers to those questions, and there never have been. Radical, fundamental change is both needed and possible. But it will take forceful questioning from the top.
It’s unfair to load up Mayor Chow with too many expectations. She has three years to work and a large hole in her budget. But no one should underestimate the potential for real change. Great things can happen in Toronto, now that the city has a mayor who believes great things are possible.