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I wasn't talking about universities. I was talking about a mix of universities and k-12 education. In that sense, Toronto is excellent, much better than Chicago, especially within city limits.
Universities get a nod to Chicago - then K-12 education? Actually the public school systems in many, many Chicago school districts are very good. CPD is OK until high school in Chicago, but there's a handful of private high schools in the city that are all very highly rated nationally.
True - point is, it's not clear between Chicago and Toronto even in this case. Boston is better than both, but then it gets murky after that.
Okay, and also the population of the United States is nearly 10X higher than that of Canada's, so it's not hard to do that. What's your point? University of Illinois has a 23.18% international enrollment, but I wouldn't argue that it's better than U of Chicago overall for this reason alone (though it's a great university, and its engineering program is better than UC's). What do international students have to do with anything? I have a cousin who did his postdoc at U of Toronto under a extremely well known person - I know all about the university. It's a great university and amongst the top in the world, but saying it's better than U of Chicago is just stretching the truth. Let's not forget the fact that U of Chicago has an endowment that's nearly 3.5 times greater than that of the University of Toronto.
On top of this, of all the universities in the world, University of Chicago has the 3rd most Nobel Prize Laureates that either worked there or attended there or are affiliates to the university- the only universities in the world with more are Harvard and University of Cambridge. U of Chicago has 97 Nobel Laureates in this regard - U of Toronto has 10 - University of Chicago has almost 10 times more than U of Toronto. It's not even close in this regard. Actually, Northwestern University has more than University of Toronto too - it has 18 of them.
Nothing against U of Toronto - it's one of the best, but compared to U of Chicago? Sorry. Include Northwestern in this and the fact that U of Illinois with one of the best engineering programs on the planet has a satellite campus in the city and is going to build a much bigger one soon - Chicago is ahead of Toronto in this regard.
I was shooting from the hip on the University thing.
University of Toronto is one of the most if not the most prominent universities in the entire country of Canada, whereas UofChicago, much like the city itself, gets lost among the other top Universities in the USA. In this sense UofT may be more "famous" around the world than UofChicago.
But again, shooting from the hip.
As for the cities themselves, here is a guy driving from a suburb in Chicago to Chinatown in Downtown Chicago. The same guy does a drive from a suburb of Toronto to Chinatown in Downtown Toronto. Both in the summer, both recent videos.
You can be the judge of the overall cityscape, but personally Toronto just seems like a cleaner, more polished, and more desirable city, which is reflected in its reputation, livability rankings, and house prices.
Universities get a nod to Chicago - then K-12 education? Actually the public school systems in many, many Chicago school districts are very good. CPD is OK until high school in Chicago, but there's a handful of private high schools in the city that are all very highly rated nationally.
Toronto has some pretty good private school too
Upper Canada College
University of Toronto is one of the most if not the most prominent universities in the entire country of Canada
Very much agree
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whereas UofChicago, much like the city itself, gets lost among the other top Universities in the USA. In this sense UofT may be more "famous" around the world than UofChicago.
Ummm, no. You have a lot to learn about the University of Chicago if you seriously think this. I mean maybe the average person who doesn't know about higher academics in the US might think this (Harvard, Yale, and MIT are always at the top of the list of these people - obviously for good reason, but still). For anybody who knows about academics, important discoveries, etc - they'd never say this. Again, U of Chicago has the 3rd most Nobel Laureates than any institution in the entire world except for Harvard and Cambridge. More than MIT. More than Yale. More than Cal Tech. More than NYU. More than Brown. More than U of Toronto, etc.
You do realize that Barack Obama was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago for awhile, right? (http://www.businessinsider.com/when-...teacher-2016-7) You do realize that the Governor of the Central Bank of India from 2013 to 2016 is currently a professor there, right (and was also a professor before being the Central Banker)? (https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty...ghuram-g-rajan). He also was the Chief Economist for the IMF from 2003 to 2006. Enrico Fermi was a former professor as was Edwin Hubble. Too many important faculty and alum to count.
To say it gets lost - you have a lot to learn.
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You can be the judge of the overall cityscape, but personally Toronto just seems like a cleaner, more polished, and more desirable city, which is reflected in its reputation, livability rankings, and house prices.
I lived in Chicago for awhile - it's a very clean city. Toronto is cleaner, not by a ton, but a little - both in this regard are great and much better than a lot of cities (especially a city like NYC).
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I will hopefully get to visit Chicago this spring, looking forward to it.
It's easy to judge a city by the internet. Chicago is an amazing city - hopefully you'll enjoy it, though I'd recommend going in the summer. Hopefully you are going to the actual core of the city and not just near the airport or something.
Toronto has some pretty good private school too
Upper Canada College
U of T is no slouch either as a university.
Agree - but compared to U of Chicago, U of Chicago win out. A more apt comparison to U of Toronto would be Northwestern. Both are similar in terms of rankings - number of nobel laureates aren't too far off - U of T with 10 and Northwestern with 18. Northwestern has half the students as U of T but 4-5 times the endowment of U of T though.
Ummm, no. You have a lot to learn about the University of Chicago if you seriously think this. I mean maybe the average person who doesn't know about higher academics in the US might think this (Harvard, Yale, and MIT are always at the top of the list of these people - obviously for good reason, but still). For anybody who knows about academics, important discoveries, etc - they'd never say this. Again, U of Chicago has the 3rd most Nobel Laureates than any institution in the entire world except for Harvard and Cambridge. More than MIT. More than Yale. More than Cal Tech. More than NYU. More than Brown. More than U of Toronto, etc.
You do realize that Barack Obama was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago for awhile, right? You do realize that the Governor of the Central Bank of India from 2013 to 2016 is currently a professor there, right (and was also a professor before being the Central Banker)? (https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty...ghuram-g-rajan). Enrico Fermi was a former professor as was Edwin Hubble. Too many important faculty and alum to count.
To say it gets lost - you have a lot to learn.
Yes I'm talking more about the average person/undergrad student.
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It's easy to judge a city by the internet. Chicago is an amazing city - hopefully you'll enjoy it, though I'd recommend going in the summer. Hopefully you are going to the actual core of the city and not just near the airport or something.
I will be in the core, but I'm not a typical tourist. Doubt I'll do the river tour for example, but I do a lot of walking.
Comparing the major American cities I've recently visited (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC) to the major Canadian ones (Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal), so far there has been a clear difference between American style cities and Canadian style cities. As a guy from Toronto I would be interested to see how this difference plays out between two great lake sister cities of similar size and population.
I attribute much of this difference to the greater income inequality among US city populations than Canadian ones (though Canada too like most western countries is getting worse every year), which brings about more blight, homelessness, and questionable neighborhoods.
For example I expect Chicago's core to offer grander public spaces than downtown Toronto, but at the same time there really isn't any neighborhood or suburb in Toronto that is as bad as some of Chicago's worst.
When I said K-12 education going to Toronto that's because I do not consider private or charter schools as they are for the few not the vast majority. Canada has relatively few private K to 12 schools and charter schools are illegal.
I also think Chicago & Boston do outclass Toronto in the fine arts but with the definite caveat of theatre where Toronto has the 3rd largest theatre seen in the English speaking world after New York and London.
As for the economy, the US does calculate it's unemployment rates differently from any other OECD country and when making a comparison to other OECD countries most statisticians add approx. 0.7% to the US rate for even comparisons. Comparing economies of different countries is difficult as well. The US is certainly wealthier than Canada but much of that is due to the dollar. The Canadian dollar is at 80 cents right now but 10 years ago was above the US dollar but that doesn't mean Canadians all of a sudden took a 20% pay cut or Americans got a 20% raise.
Even accounting for the anomalies of the currencies, the US is certainly wealthier than Canada by roughly 15% per-capita but then Canada has a larger middle class with less wealth & income inequity. The US has a GINI quotient of 40 while Canada's is only 32.
Yes I'm talking more about the average person/undergrad student.
There's a lot of important universities in the world that get lost in the fold in this way, but that doesn't mean they're less powerful. University of Toronto is very important and really good, but U of Chicago is even more so in terms of the things that count, not what somebody who doesn't know much about higher education, research, discoveries, etc who lives in the middle of Oregon thinks.
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I will be in the core, but I'm not a typical tourist. Doubt I'll do the river tour for example, but I do a lot of walking.
I would HIGHLY recommend a river cruise - I'm not a typical tourist either and hate typical tourist things, but the river cruises in Chicago really are great. Awesome scenery (architecturally) and you actually learn a ton of history and also about architecture. There's a lot of knowledge, facts, etc for both history and architecture on these tours and they throw out a lot of architectural terms.
If nothing else, then taking a water taxi and walking the entirety of the riverwalk is a must. The newer riverwalk extension is really great.
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Comparing the major American cities I've visited (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC) to the major Canadian ones (Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal), so far there has been a clear difference between American style cities and Canadian style cities. As a guy from Toronto I would be interested to see how this difference plays out between two great lake sister cities of similar size and population.
Yes, I'd agree. I think that at least downtown in many places you'll find it cleaner than SF and definitely cleaner than NYC (especially Manhattan). Before I moved to NYC full time, I was traveling every week between the two cities (Chicago and NYC) for a small handful of years. It was such a huge difference in terms of cleanliness and very noticeable. Toronto could be cleaner on average than Chicago, but Chicago is still clean for a large dense/dense-ish urban city. I remember when I took around a few people from Amsterdam - the first thing out of their mouths was being surprised at how clean it was compared to other American cities they'd been to.
Anyway, here is my former neighborhood which is in Gold Coast. If you keep going up, it's one of my favorite parts of the city actually (plaza with the fountain):
I feel like these Toronto threads are just the same Torontonians arguing the same boring minutiae for the 100th time. Don't you people ever get bored of the same conversation in thread after thread after thread?
So why fan the flames.... If you have something better to do with your time than do it.
LOL - I've lived in both cities (Chicago and NYC). My mom is from NYC though - a lot of my family is and my dad while from LA, was the first in his immediate family born outside of Europe and NYC.
Chicago is a great city and while a lot of people know that it's good, I still think it's very underrated. The media has done a number on Chicago in the last handful of years and also I think the city has some pretty bad PR on top of it. My girlfriend, who is a marketing manager , said this exact thing after the first time I made her visit Chicago with me and I took her around to a lot of different areas. There's a reason why she vouched for my opinion to convince her parents to visit it when they came from Shanghai.
It's a tale of two cities - no doubt about it, but it's really no different in this regard than most major US cities. You have high crime areas and then you have mostly not so high crime areas (or maybe moderate crime). The high crime areas could be worse than some other major US cities, but avoiding those areas is extremely easy and they aren't really close to downtown anymore (15 or 20 years ago that might have been a different story here and there).
Damn Chicago really is beautiful, even I can admit that Toronto's Waterfront is nothing like that @ all.
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