{"id":951869,"date":"2026-10-30T12:12:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951869\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T12:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:12:18","slug":"what-kind-of-toronto-does-chow-want-to-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951869\/","title":{"rendered":"What kind of Toronto does Chow want to build?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Olivia Chow gives her victory speech at her camp’s election night headquarters, in Toronto, Oct. 26.Nathan Denette\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Toronto is Olivia Chow\u2019s city. The mayor trounced her conservative challenger, Brad Bradford, to win re-election by almost 130,000 votes. This was a repudiation of Bradford\u2019s campaign of fear. <\/p>\n

But her campaign was also short on vision. Ms. Chow promised optimism and a handful of day-to-day improvements for vulnerable citizens. School food programs, transit fare caps \u2013 these promises lack the power to stir the blood.<\/p>\n

Ms. Chow, who now has four years and considerable political capital, must build a progressive blueprint for Toronto. That must include a clear idea of how Toronto will evolve \u2013 and a clear strategy for the physical city. <\/p>\n

City is a crucial word here. Toronto is now a metropolis of 3.3 million, the centre of a region that tops seven million. It will continue to grow. These numbers have specific implications for the physical environment. Toronto must rely less on cars, and more on public transit, walking and cycling. Some parts of the city will get new buildings and add many more residents. Many public spaces and amenities will get built or rebuilt. <\/p>\n

Ms. Chow has displayed few strong positions on these matters. <\/p>\n

On transportation, she supports bike lanes. But she also boasted about getting the provincial government to help reopen the Gardiner Expressway. Under her watch, the city has largely failed to rebalance some of its 5,500 kilometres of roadway from vehicles to pedestrians, as dozens of cities around the world have now done, improving quality of life, reducing air pollution and improving the visitor experience. <\/p>\n

Opinion: While Olivia Chow clinched victory in Toronto, Brad Bradford earned a respectable loss<\/a><\/p>\n

On Oct. 26 in London, England, Mayor Sadiq Khan permanently closed a kilometre of busy Oxford Street. Ms. Chow could bring to life the pedestrianization of downtown Yonge Street, now stalled, and of John Street \u2013 which has been in the works for 17 years.<\/p>\n

On housing, Ms. Chow has advocated for more new homes and created the city\u2019s public Toronto Builds. But that is a boutique operation that will generate a few thousand homes a year, at best, while relying almost completely on federal funding. <\/p>\n

Most housing will continue to be delivered by private builders. And reforming the city\u2019s sclerotic planning system, a massive job, has only just begun. Recent policy tweaks to serve small-scale development are positive. <\/p>\n

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says it doesn’t matter who voted for her, she’ll be mayor for everyone in Toronto, and will work with the new council and other levels of government to addr\u2026Full Caption<\/p>\n

Still, a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. analysis suggests Toronto\u2019s housing construction needs to double from its 2019 highs in order to moderate affordability. Triplexes will not ever be enough.<\/p>\n

City government also reshapes Toronto in its own right, and key aspects of its capital program go largely unscrutinized. The parks department capital budget for this year is $415.1-million. How many councillors even know what is in that budget, or how it was shaped? How do those projects build community? Are pool-and-gym megacomplexes, costing nearly $150-million apiece, actually going to bring people together?<\/p>\n

All these things are intertwined: Where people live and work, how they get around, and where and why they come together. And the uncomfortable fact is that Toronto\u2019s government has no coherent vision for the physical city. Since it was amalgamated in 1998, Toronto has lurched along without articulating what kind of a place it is, or wants to be. Does it want to be a metropolis, open to all, vibrant and dynamic?<\/p>\n

In Ms. Chow\u2019s redoubt of the old City of Toronto, one can avoid that question. There has been a steady policy consensus since the 1960s that house neighbourhoods, especially older ones, should be left intact as refuges for middle-class families. <\/p>\n

But those zones are emptying out, getting richer and older<\/a>. They have not stayed the same. <\/p>\n

A city never does. It changes, and it needs someone to lead it into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Olivia Chow gives her victory speech at her camp’s election night headquarters, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,3302,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-951869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-toronto","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}