Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: blatently prioritize urbanism

For the purposes of this post, let's use gross generalizations in the service of brevity and divide human lifestyle into two categories: urban and suburban. Urban lifestyle is high-density, based on and valuing apartments/condos and public transit and all the services amenities you need right around the corner. Suburban lifestyle is low-density, based on and valuing houses and land and cars, and not minding if you have to drive to get anywhere.

Suburban lifestyle you can get anywhere in the GTA. Urban lifestyle you can get only in Toronto. Other places do try, but you always come away feeling like an eccentric making a sacrifice on principle rather than simply quietly going about your life. Toronto is the only place around here where urban is a viable enough option that people might choose it out of preference rather than necessity.

In light of the recent budget situation in Toronto, I find myself wondering what would happen if the City of Toronto made a deliberate choice to prioritize urban over suburban. What if they just said "Yep, we're taxing house ownership, we're taxing cars, we're introducing congestion charges. Houses and cars are luxuries here, so we're taxing them to subsidize public services. If you don't like it, go to 905." Boldly make Toronto even more Toronto at the expense of things that are non-Toronto about it. You want city? We'll give you city! You don't want city? Then what are you doing here?

Would it work? I have no idea. But it does occur to me that people trying for the suburban lifestyle within 416 have chosen to live in 416 for a reason. Houses and parking are cheaper in 905, so if houses and cars were their top priority they'd go elsewhere. It just remains to be seen if whatever led these suburban-lifestyle-seekers to live in 416 is strong enough to keep them there.

No comments: