Posted on 12/06/2016 9:41:06 AM PST by SouthernerFromTheNorth
Here's why rural Ontario is fading and cities aren't
The urban-rural divide is swiftly becoming one of the most pressing issues of economic policy in this century. From Europe to England to the United States and yes, here in Canada, the sweeping changes to physical landscapes have translated to sweeping changes in political landscapes.
As David Reevely pointed out last week, Ontario’s urban centres have seen economic growth and recovery that the stretches of rural land separating those centres simply haven’t. There are multiple reasons for this, one being that Ontario’s municipalities have been practising a policy of intensification for years now. That policy encourages people to live in cities where there is work, in part to preserve existing farmland and protected lands outside urban centres. Intensification is an answer to ugly and wasteful suburban sprawl, and a response to the flight of young people out of the suburban and rural areas and into cities.
This policy of intensification comes at a time when rural life is growing less and less attractive. Certainly the cost of land and living is low, which should be enough to keep some young people in the area. But most of the jobs that guarantee a living wage can no longer be obtained without a university degree, and even workers with graduate degrees are forced to reckon with the corporate preference for no-strings-attached contract workers, and the vagaries of the “gig economy.” We cannot tell our young people that in order to succeed they must be educated, then complain when they leave home for that education.
On the other hand, characterizing this divide as the fight between “Liberalville and Toryland” sounds catchy, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Cities don’t win the presence of major employers because they’re socially or democratically liberal. They win major employers because they’re better places to live, and better places to live tend to be socially progressive.
This August, Toronto was ranked the fourth most liveable city in the world. (This, despite its decrepit subway system and its history of carding and other odious practices.) Are the executives at major firms really going to tell some of their most valuable employees that they’re moving locations to a less expensive area where they might be the only visible minority in a crowd? Or where they might not find a Pride event? This has nothing to do with who is in power, and everything to do with longstanding local culture.
That said, the urban-rural divide in Ontario is just as important and as dangerous as the urban-rural divide that doomed England to Brexit, and created the opening for Donald Trump in the U.S. More resources must be allocated to including people from all walks of life in Canadian prosperity.
That includes refugees from Syria, and it also includes the people in the rural reaches whose jobs have been automated away. It’s terrible that Ontario said no to green energy this year. Those jobs could have made significant changes to the way of life in rural Ontario – building and maintaining windmills and solar panels is a strategy that would save jobs and the environment.
Madeline Ashby is a strategic foresight consultant and novelist living in Toronto. Find her at madelineashby.com or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.
Since Canada’s’ population is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few large cities, the odds of a Trump Uprising there seem remote.
She lives in Toronto and shares their far-left views. People like her are exactly why Brexit and Trump occurred.
How can she speak on what rural people should get, when those are PRECISELY the reason they don’t live in the big city in the first place??? In those regions, they strongly oppose “green” energy - and her response is to double down?
“Are the executives at major firms really going to tell some of their most valuable employees that they’re moving locations to a less expensive area where they might be the only visible minority in a crowd? Or where they might not find a Pride event?”
Yes
Sadly, and that is Agenda 21 in action which big city liberals want to double down on.
http://globalnews.ca/news/2808094/sky-high-hydro-rates-an-absolute-crisis-for-rural-ontario/
Think again
And those cities are teeming to the gills with recent immigrants.
Toronto does not have a “decrepit subway system.” The author should visit New York City some time.
So far as I understand Canada’s electoral system, there is no Electoral College and thus “California” wins every vote.
Am I wrong?
“Cities don’t win the presence of major employers because they’re socially or democratically liberal. They win major employers because they’re better places to live, and better places to live tend to be socially progressive.”
fourth most livable city???? I would love to see the research variables on that study.
Take it from someone who lived there his whole life, Toronto is traffic choked, transit dysfunctional, overtaxed, permanently under construction and loaded with thousands of empty condos bought by the Chinese elite. It has been ruled by insane liberals for decades and the waste is unreal. You literally cannot own a simple townhouse in the city for under 1 million.
Ah, but when the inevitable Depression or war comes and destroys the urban infrastructure, those in the cities suffer and die in much greater numbers. You can live without museums and the opera as long as you have your own food and water.
Its all about government power and our printed, fiat currencies and money supply that are centrally-planned by central banks.
This occurs in every and all cases of bureaucratic control of a commodity - whether rice, or money, or autos. The connected and powerful will get the goods when they are valuable, while everyone else goes without.
We may have reached a point in America to where cities above 250,000 and the rest of the nation, less urban and more rural separate, not just in culture, education but also finance.
Let the cities finance themselves and let rural areas finale themselves.
Tax money taken from the people in rural areas wold go to services in rural areas.
Big cities like, New York, Houston,, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco and Austin would also keep their tax dollars and keep their culture.
I was recently walking in downtown Toronto. I felt a sudden shiver and and pallor of dark energy, like I had just entered Mordor.
I looked up and was at 205 Wellington St. West - the HQ of the CBC. I could feel a kind of negative, leftist, controlling, nanny-state energy emanating from the place.
Dogs don't "win" fleas because the dogs like it, it's because the fleas do.
“Rural Ontario” is different than rural areas of the U.S. As you make your way up the Ottawa River valley you find that most of rural Ontario is forested with rocky soil. Combined with the cold climate, it’s not conducive to agriculture at all. Logging and mining have historically been the dominant industries in these areas, and they’ve been slowly fading over time.
Cities always have an advantage of economies of scale. This means that many products and services cost less in cities simply because they are sold in larger quantities. In some cases cities have things that rural areas don’t have at all — like prominent universities, major league sports teams and specialized medical care.
In general cost ultimately indicates total energy consumption. People that live in the exburbs consume far less total energy and create far less pollution than city slickers. Concrete and steel cliff dwelling is a relatively recent invention, and a crime against nature. A traditional country lifestyle combined with modern high speed internet is a superior quality of life than living in a polluted, crime infested, concentration camp. In addition to being terrorist targets, big city communes are disease distribution centers. People that grow up in a big city are shorter and less healthy than their country cousins.
I honestly can’t say I know of a soul who lives in a city because it’s cheaper.
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