Is

bigger better for Toronto?

Toronto is a city of near 3 million inhabitants, this makes it a major city,
assessing what are the needs of Toronto as a city and if growing bigger is better,
needs responses that look for the various factors of city planning and their
known outcomes. In this work we are going to first start analysing the recent
history of Toronto and its different amalgamation process during the last
century, second we are going to portray the empirical information given by Slack
and Bird, contrasting them to K. Newton and P. Swianiewicz theories, and finally
we are going to make our conclusion helping us with Slack and Bird thesis.

The first amalgamation process in Toronto was The Metropolitan Act in 1954.
Which established a two-tier government with a metropolitan tier and 13 lower-
tier municipalities (the City of Toronto plus the 12 suburban municipalities). The
metropolitan government (Metro) was initially given responsibility for planning,
borrowing, assessment, transportation, and the administration of justice. Local
area municipalities were responsible for fire protection, garbage collection and
disposal, licensing and inspection, local distribution of hydroelectric power,
policing, public health, general welfare assistance, 27 recreation and community
services, and the collection of taxes. Both tiers shared responsibility for parks,
planning, roads and traffic control, sewage disposal, and water supply. Costs
were shared on the basis of property tax base. This meant that, in 1954, the City
of Toronto “picked up 62 percent of the costs of Metro”. This creation of a
federated form of metropolitan governance and the good response that gave to
serious public service deficiencies (infrastructure for the orderly growth of the
suburbs, pooled revenues over the whole metropolitan area, solved the water
and sewage treatment problems, constructed rapid transit lines, established a
network of arterial highways, built housing for seniors, created a Metro parks
system, among others) made this model of local governance and Toronto “an
object of admiration for students of metropolitan affairs throughout the
continent”. There was no loss of local autonomy as the local services were
differentiated across the lower tiers.

In 1970 as the city started getting bigger, the growing issues began, the greater
Toronto area appears (GTA) and in 1996 the GTA Task Force is created to solve
and integrate metro. There were other reports as the Who Does What Panel that
recommended as well as the Task force the need for a government body to cover
the entire region; the OGTA, focused on a strategic vision for the GTA and the
coordination of regional issues; the forum of GTA mayors and chairs
concentrated on economic development and marketing in the GTA. Great
number of reports pointed that local government within the GTA be simplified
by creating a Greater Toronto Council for the region, eliminating Toronto’s upper
tier (Metro) as well as the other four GTA regional governments, and reducing
the number of lower-tier municipalities through further amalgamation.

Almost without listening to any of the reports, a new unified City of Toronto was
created by provincial fiat on January 1, 1998. The upper-tier (metropolitan)
government and six local area municipalities were merged into a single-tier city.
This amalgamation had not been on anyone’s agenda before it became reality.
Most provincial government efforts had been directed at addressing regional
issues across the entire Greater Toronto Area, municipalities outside Toronto
also were concerned that Metro amalgamation would result in increased
polarization within the region. The amalgamation was not well received by
neighbors neither as residents felt that it did not address the regional issues
facing Toronto and it was less locally responsive than the system it replaced.
This was tried to fix by creating the GTSB but it was given too little power, later,
however, the provincial government disbanded the GTSB and to this day, there is
still no effective regional governance structure in the Toronto metropolitan
region.

The problem that Toronto faced was the dichotomy between merging into a big
city in which (in theory) there was going to be cost savings (less government
officials), tax decreases, more autonomy and bigger economy of scale among
others, or a cooperative government with the GTA and the region, and more than
one government tier (Toronto city officials maybe saw this as threat to their
position). So lets compare these two models and see which one would have been
better for Toronto, the current one or a more cooperative one.

Slack and Bird point that studies in Canada have found little evidence of
economies of scale in large municipalities and that the Cost minimizing (perfect
size) in Canada is between 20.000 and 40.000 inhabitants. Similarly, the
promised cost savings from municipal amalgamations in Canada have proven to
be elusive. Competition between municipalities will likely be reduced by
amalgamation, thus weakening incentives to be efficient, to be responsive to
local needs, and to adapt to changing economic conditions. Reduced competition
may also lead to higher tax rates. In spite of, K. Newton argues that larger
systems are in a better position (though they do not always take advantage of it)
to do more than smaller ones. Large units, Newton says, do not suffer from the
diseconomies of scale, or from the cumbersome and expensive administration
which is often claimed for them, and nor do they have many of the democratic
ailments which are commonly diagnosed. Second, so far as size does make a
difference, large units seem to have something of an advantage in some respects:
they are better able to provide a range of specialized facilities which are beyond
the capacity of most smaller units; they are better able to organize some services
such as planning, transport, police, and fire which must be provided on a city
wide basis, and which cannot sensibly be broken down and organized on a sub-
city or neighborhood basis; and they may have something of an advantage when
it comes to organized (as opposed to individual) participation in politics, namely
that of community groups, political parties, and the media. P. Swianiewicz
theories try to see the whole picture comparing the opposite cases of France and
England. In France, he argues, territorial amalgamation seems unimaginable, so
it is necessary to look for alternative solutions (such as inter-municipal co-
operation, perhaps combined with privatization of many communal services).
The situation in England, on the other hand, is just the opposite, territorial
reforms are introduced ‘too easily’, the technocratic discourse of service
provision seems to dominate totally over democratic arguments, and the system,
which for a long time has been by far the most territorially consolidated in
Europe, seems unable to stop further and further attempts to amalgamate
territorial units (no more ‘local’). P. Swianiewicz concludes that inter-municipal
co-operation maybe the only realistic option for a solution.

So which of these theories can we take as valid for the case of Toronto? If we see
the evidence, Slack and Bird analyze the costs of fire fighters, libraries, garbage
and, park and recreation, before and after the amalgamation and conclude that is
not clear that amalgamation has reduced costs in Toronto. On the other hand the
amalgamation does have decrease taxes especially on business property as Slack
and Bird empirical work shows. But other authors have argued that one of the
main failures of amalgamation has been the decline in citizen participation
(Golden and Slack 2006). Before amalgamation, the city provided many
opportunities for citizen participation (Toronto Transition Team 1999)

So we can conclude, taking in account all the theories that we have studied, that
the creation of the new city of Toronto did not adequately address the
fundamental problems of the region. The new city was largely irrelevant to the
problems faced both by Toronto and by the GTA as a whole as Slack and Bird
point. Regional issues need regional solutions that go beyond Toronto’s
boundaries. The problems currently facing the new City of Toronto are no less
significant now than they were before; they have not been ameliorated by the
creation of the new city. At the same time, the amalgamated city has resulted in
reduced access and participation by residents in local decision-making. But, as K.
Newton argues, may nonetheless, have had some benefits, for example, a
stronger presence in economic development, a fairer sharing of the tax base
among rich and poor municipalities, equalizing local services so that everyone
can enjoy a similar level of services, and a stronger voice for Toronto with
respect to municipal issues within the region and across the province and
country. For Toronto bigger was not better and as P. Swianiewicz the golden
mean for a municipal organization may be inter-municipal co-operation.