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Toronto's relationship to Canada is quite different than Chicago's relationship to the Midwest. Chicago is indeed, the capital (unofficial of course) of a region. Kids and families from some dozen states visit Chicago, take field trips to Chicago,move to Chicago, have friends and family in Chicago...etc etc etc. Toronto? I know some might move from the Maritimes, the Prairies, Alberta, BC etc to Toronto, but it hardly plays a similar central role for Canada that Chicago does for the Midwest. Francophone Canada especially will always look to Montreal as its gathering point. Why would someone from Vancouver see Toronto as more attractive as a destination than Seattle. And would people from Quebec/Maritimes see a visit to Toronto as more enticing than visiting Boston or NYC?
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I think you are seriously underestimating just how big a fish Toronto is in Canada's relatively small pond.
It's basically uncontested. Especially in Anglo-Canada. People from coast to coast move there in order to live in the ''big city'' that is Toronto. All of their ''national'' stuff is concentrated in Toronto: publishing, media, etc.
For the time being, it's still Chicago. The Windy City tends to rank higher in most global city measures (Brookings, The Economist, AT Kearney, etc). But I always notice that Toronto zooms ahead in the prosperity indexes, which makes me think that if Chicago doesn't start to clean up its act, Toronto will start to pass it on by. However, Toronto benefits from Canada's better run economy and banking system; that doubled with the fact that Toronto did not have to live down deindustrialization anywhere near the level of Chicago which is probably the most misunderstood factor about what hinders Chicago.
I read in an early post that someone said something to the effect of Toronto is living a boom that Chicago could only "dream" of...well Chicago all ready lived that dream. It went from a small village on a swamp to among one of the five largest cities in the world by the end of the 1800s, still retaining records for one of the fast growing cities in human civilzation. This is a kind of exponential growth and rise to power Toronto will probably never understand. That great rush of energy amassed innovation in architecture, food, music, two World's Fairs, literature, and industrial/agricultural standards. I think that is the aspect that Toronto has the hardest time competing with. No doubt Toronto has done some great things, but it has not being as historically influential as Chicago. But economically (though Chicago has a higher GDP), I think Toronto competes as I believe what someone said earlier about Toronto being the head of its country has huge benefits. The future might just belong to Toronto, but for now I really do still think it's Chicago.
Again, you are extrapolating from a 5-year timeframe and making it seem as if that will continue forever. A 5-year time frame where Toronto boomed and Chicago faced its greatest recession in 80 years. There's nothing to indicate that will continue for the next decade, much less the next 25 years as some forumers have presumed. I comented on 200-300m and 300m+. Toronto will never surpass Chicago's skyline just by building 150m skyscrapers (the only height you seem to care about). Nobody is impressed by a 150m structure. Sorry, they're just not. When people look at Chicago's skyline they are wowed by its architectural gems and its supertalls. And unfortunately, Toronto is lacking in both.
Downtown living is just one facet of construction. Chicago has excelled in the past few years at bringing in major Fortune 500 corporations and booming startups. Downtown living gets you the cookie-cutter condos. It's the corporations that bring in the fantastic skyscrapers. So unless those moving into Toronto are all multi-billionaires like on New York's 57th Street, downtown living will bring a ton of 100m-150m blue clad, basic squares. In other words, more of the same. So if you want to see more Vancouverization and the proliferation of more blue cookie-cutter condos, that's your preference. I think any good skyline needs to have a diverse base of growth: residential and corporate. Chicago is pursuing the right approach.
The CTBUH is the authority on defining tall buildings and the heights of those buildings. The CTBUH has found that the CN Tower is not a building so it cannot, therefore, be considered a supertall. That's not me, that's the CTBUH. Again, you can believe what you want. You can believe the CN Tower is 10,000' if you want to. I'm just giving you the official tally
Since when is the greatness of mass transit based on ridership? I'm sure the metro in Cairo has high ridership and it's still a pretty ****ty system. Chicago's Metra+L is far, far, far larger than Toronto's. Toronto is playing catch-up right now and it'll take decades for it to surpass Chicago. And CHicago has 145 Rapid Transit Stations. I hardly think Toronto building light rail can chip away at that.
The Golden Horseshoe is closer to a CSA, but it's still much larger than one. If you think Niagara Falls is in Toronto's metro area, then please add Milwaukee to Chicago's. And Chicago's CSA already crosses into both Indiana and Wisconsin so crossing a state does not matter one iota: Chicago did that decades ago. And how is adding Milwaukee to Chicago the same as adding Buffalo (a city in a completely different country from Toronto!)? I'm not asking to add Milwaukee. I'm asking to subtract those parts of the Golden Horseshoe that don't belong.
Your argument is that Toronto is more 'diverse' and use its number of international migrants as proof. But diversity is not just based on nationality. Chicago is many times more racially diverse than Toronto. And with the rapid growth of the Asian and Hispanic communities will continue to be so. And Toronto hasn't even had a non-white mayor yet, something Chicago achieved over 3 decades ago.
Chicago's metropolitan area is 48% non-white today: 22% Latino, 17% Black, 6% Asian, 3% Other. Toronto is 43% non-white. So not only is the city of Chicago itself much more racially diverse but even the metropolitan area is more diverse than Toronto's. And Chicago is also rapidly diversifying as well. Plus how is Toronto going to become 67% racial minorities in 15 years? Are all the whites going to die in a massive plague? There is 0% that Toronto's Golden Horseshoe will be 67% minority in 15 years when the CMA is 57% white today. 0%. Not sure where you found that factoid.
You stated ...
Chicago area 48% non-white
Toronto area 43% non-white
hmmm....5% not a big difference
Remember, Chicago has huge African American population (along with sizable Hispanic),
that's where you mainly get the 48% non white (heck a lot of US cities are even more
non-white if you get my drift....Detroit ...DC anyone)
Here it is for me...
Chicago ....busier airport...yes
...taller skyscrapers ....yes
...a bit higher GDP ...OK
But diversity....Toronto holds the crown ....an extremely diverse city,
recent immigrants from almost every country in the world, really amazing.
Only cities like NYC and London are up in TO's league. Chicago isn't.
Much more people in Chi-town are "americanized" ...last name might be Polish
or German but they are American thru and thru.
Not so in Toronto, not by a long shot.
I think you are seriously underestimating just how big a fish Toronto is in Canada's relatively small pond.
It's basically uncontested. Especially in Anglo-Canada. People from coast to coast move there in order to live in the ''big city'' that is Toronto. All of their ''national'' stuff is concentrated in Toronto: publishing, media, etc.
Isn't it the case that: Toronto's the biggest fish, but Canada's also not that centralized of a country with a primate city that is above and beyond all other cities in virtually every category such as Tokyo in Japan, Paris in France or London in the UK. Toronto's place seems to be more similar to that of NYC in the US, but just with a much smaller pond it's residing in (US has almost 10x the population and GDP of Canada and almost 12x that of Anglo-Canada).
Reading this thread, and other threads on City Data, it appears Americans and Canadians seem to have very different ideas of what "diversity" means in demographics.
Apparently in America diversity means a lack of white people. A city with only 2 major ethnicities is considered extremely diverse in so far as white people are a relatively smaller representation of the 2.
In Canada, diversity means a mix of many different ethnicites and cultures.
Isn't it the case that: Toronto's the biggest fish, but Canada's also not that centralized of a country with a primate city that is above and beyond all other cities in virtually every category such as Tokyo in Japan, Paris in France or London in the UK. Toronto's place seems to be more similar to that of NYC in the US, but just with a much smaller pond it's residing in (US has almost 10x the population and GDP of Canada and almost 12x that of Anglo-Canada).
I agree with much of this, but in Canada (economically) and Anglo-Canada (for cultural and demographics), the Greater Toronto Area pulls in and churns out a lot more than NYC does for the US. The US' economy, media, culture, civil society, etc. is much more spread out across the country as there are way more large cities.
Just to use two examples but economically the number of large national corporations in and around Toronto is huge. The average household in Vancouver believe it or not probably 50% of their consumer goods in the house that were either produced or transited through Toronto. Or are linked to a company with a head office in Toronto.
Culturally Anglo-Canada can sometimes seem like a small and struggling player and as such it makes sense to concentrate things in one spot in order to maximize efficiencies and create synergies. That spot is Toronto. There is not true Toronto-Vancouver duality in culture and entertainment like you have NYC-LA in the US. Vancouver does have an entertainment industry but it's mostly a Hollywood North thing and not really for the homegrown Canadian market.
The Toronto area also has between a quarter or moving in on a third of all of Canada's population depending on how you measure it, and an even larger share of English-speaking Canada's population when you take Quebec's quarter out of the equation (for cultural purposes).
I agree with much of this, but in Canada (economically) and Anglo-Canada (for cultural and demographics), the Greater Toronto Area pulls in and churns out a lot more than NYC does for the US. The US' economy, media, culture, civil society, etc. is much more spread out across the country as there are way more large cities.
Just to use two examples but economically the number of large national corporations in and around Toronto is huge. The average household in Vancouver believe it or not probably 50% of their consumer goods in the house that were either produced or transited through Toronto. Or are linked to a company with a head office in Toronto.
Culturally Anglo-Canada can sometimes seem like a small and struggling player and as such it makes sense to concentrate things in one spot in order to maximize efficiencies and create synergies. That spot is Toronto. There is not true Toronto-Vancouver duality in culture and entertainment like you have NYC-LA in the US. Vancouver does have an entertainment industry but it's mostly a Hollywood North thing and not really for the homegrown Canadian market.
The Toronto area also has between a quarter or moving in on a third of all of Canada's population depending on how you measure it, and an even larger share of English-speaking Canada's population when you take Quebec's quarter out of the equation (for cultural purposes).
That sounds plausible. There's also the very large (though recently struggling) energy industry in Alberta. I'm curious as to why Vancouver doesn't have a larger domestic film and television production share meant for the domestic market. Are there pretty much no major Canadian productions based in Vancouver? Regardless, it's still a much larger locus for film production so far.
I think the French Canadian aspect of things puts a lot of interesting wrinkles in there which makes it harder to gauge since in many respects it's separate from Anglo-Canada though Montreal seems to have at least a nominal hand in a lot of things that affect Anglo-Canada such as the headquarters of the National Film Board of Canada, an important and major educational institution with McGill, and the prominence of some musical groups that work in English, but are based in Montreal. I think another similarity between the US and Canada in terms of decentralization is that the capital city not being also the media, financial, corporate, and cultural center as it usually is in primate cities like Paris and London.
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