Shadows of the Tower—Urban Shadows Toronto

The City

An Overview

Toronto as it exists today was created by amalgamation in 1998. At this time, the downtown core combined with its surrounding cities to become the current city. In essence, Toronto's urban centre got combined with its suburbs into a single city. This has resulted in a tension within the city that exceeds normal neighbourhood conflicts of interest. Suburban home owners who commute into the downtown core have very different priorities than those who reside in the downtown core, and even within the suburbs there is division between those who think of themselves as citizens of a world class city and those who would prefer to live in a suburb where they work and live with only occasional forays into the actual city. Former Mayor Rob Ford exemplified the problems of the amalgamation—not just in his unfortunate behaviour being rewarded as opposed to punished until the very end, but in the way he expressed actual frustrations of the outlying regions of Toronto that others ignored.