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Do tourists miss 'Toronto the Good'? - Posted Toronto

While some people say that "gritty" = "edgy" (and therefore "cool"), there's an undeniable line that gets crossed at some point, and then gritty isn't edgy anymore, it's just shabby & run-down & dirty. It seems that far too many North American cities are on their way to that. I'm reminded of my oldest sister's visit to Victoria a couple of years ago. She lives in the heart of Tokyo, and her observations of Victoria were that it's dirty. Not the air (compared to Tokyo), but in terms of the litter on the streets, the obvious signs of infrastructural decay, and the obvious signs of social decay (panhandlers, drug users). Maybe things have gone downhill in Tokyo since her remarks, but they have also certainly gone further downhill here. This article in the National Post (by Barry Hertz) should be read in conjunction with some of the other commentaries appearing on infrastructure, whether on Richard Florida's blog, or on the CEOs for Cities blog, or even on Doc Searls's blog (see Handbasket weaving, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/05/13/handbasket-weaving/). The basic message is that this is not a question of "style" or edginess or cool or whatever, but a question of underfunded infrastructure, which is crumbling around our ears. And this has long term deleterious economic impacts.

Tags: toronto, infrastructure, infrastructure_funding, economy, competitiveness on 2008-05-13 -All Annotations (2) -About

more fromnetwork.nationalpost.com

the Royal Ontario Museum’s chief executive officer said yesterday that all the litter, dead trees, graffiti, cracked pavement and posters plastered across the cityscape detract from major attractions and leave visitors with an impression that Toronto is a metropolis in decline.
“The devil is in the details,” William Thorsell said. “Public spaces in Toronto are inferior to those in other comparable cities in the world. Just go to New York City or Chicago and walk around downtown. You would see much higher standards for public space than you do in Toronto. I’m just back from Seoul, Korea, which makes Toronto look extremely shabby.”
suggests Toronto needs to polish its tired image if it wants to maintain its status as a top-tier tourist destination, starting with such basic steps as better signs, cleaner streets, fewer panhandlers and an increase in overall friendliness.
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- Yeah, but it's not just a question of "polishing." It's a question of INVESTING: funding, supporting, repairing, improving. If my house's windows are cracked, single-pane, and leaking heat -- as well as dirty -- then polishing them won't do the trick. I need to caulk them, I need to replace cracked panes, and I need to invest in storm windows.
  posted by lampertina on 2008-05-13 22:43:29
“It’s going to take an approach where we look at sprucing up, for example, things like our washrooms in this city,” Mr. Thompson said. “That’s one of the things I got from a lot of people, that ‘Ya, your washrooms really need to be cleaned up.’ ”
One complaint among downtown and entertainment district business owners especially, has been the number of aggressive panhandlers accosting tourists. Tim Finlayson, who operates ShopDineTour Toronto, said he has gotten negative feedback from tourists about the number of homeless and seen his clients avoid streets with a high number of panhandlers.