Should we take up a public collection to send Columbus’ “mayor,” at-large unrepresentative city councilors, and non-expert department heads to visit Toronto? Every Columbus resident and voter suspicious of the “Columbus Way” and “Opportunity for ‘a few’ city” should spend time just north of the US-Canadian border in Toronto, Ontario, now the 4th largest city in North America. Canada’s largest city and Ontario’s capital is at once a great city and a challenged city, with countless lessons to teach the much smaller, alienating, undemocratic city with no identity and no history, Columbus, Ohio. We could require our “leaders” to pass a course on cities and urbanism 101 before taking office and for continuing in office.
Two weeks ago, I visited the city where I lived from 1970-1975 while I completed graduate studies at the University of Toronto. To add context, my partner and I were Landed Immigrants, not Resident Aliens, and received free health care instituted not by socialists but by Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party. Tuition at one of the hemisphere’s premier public universities was (and is) far less than comparable US institutions.
