Immigration and Toronto

As an American blogger, there's a sense that Canada is the gold standard of potential places to immigrate to: common language, high overlap in culture, closer than pretty much anywhere to friends and family back in the US, and a similar standard of living with a better social safety net.

But how does this translate into urbanist principles when considering immigrating to its major cities?

1. Regional Integration is Key

When I talk about Toronto, I think it's important to be talking about the entire Golden Horseshoe for potential immigrants, at some level, or at least the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). 

This is because if you're rich enough to actually buy into Toronto itself, you're probably having a different conversation from someone who ends up in Hamilton or Scarborough. 

Fortunately, they're increasing regional integration (though that project has faced setbacks), and there seems to be at least some awareness that yes, this needs to function as a region, not just as an economically-connected series of distinct areas. That means in the GTA that you finally see some new transit building within Toronto, and that it integrates into the plays for Go trains in the larger region.

They do have a fair number of trains! Even if the service isn't nearly at its best yet.

But if you're moving here, you're implicitly placing a bet on this actually coming to fruition: especially if you're hoping to be able to take a Go train consistently towards the US border, something that's right now not really a great option.

Of course, you could always just drive on the Gardiner to the 401, but let me tell you, that's not a fun experience. 

Again, if you can afford to live down where I took these pictures, you'll probably be fine regardless.

There may be a lot of homes in these individual towers, but...not enough for demand.

That's why regional integration is going to make or break the experience here, especially for immigrant groups that either get pushed to the margins or sprinkled throughout a wide and busy city.

2. Beware Doug Ford

This is not actually about Doug Ford specifically as a person, but it is about Ford's Ontario government and its hatred of Toronto's bike lanes. 

As we've discussed elsewhere in this series, biking as a travel option can be a godsend for immigrants, since it can increase health, reduce costs, and widen the range of places you're able to live or work.

And as you can see, people in Toronto do use them--some even for their businesses, as in this delivery ebike.

And in Toronto, strong bikeshare can even mean you don't need to own a bike to use one (though financially I'd recommend owning one if you're going to literally use it every day).  

But the Ford government is opposed to non-car street space in the city and region, seeing it as an attack on drivers and (implicitly or explicitly) on the kind of people who are drivers (i.e. out-of-Toronto voters).

So while there are major positive movements in the local area around transit and urbanism, there's also evidence already that the larger provincial government is not in favor (or favour) of this as a larger matter, and may step in to prevent or even reverse urbanist developments of which they disapprove.

That's a risk if you're hinging your immigration decision on increasing or at least stable urbanism.

3. Good Bones

But it would be unfair to treat the GTA as if it were all doom and gloom; setbacks to the Go expansion and the bike lanes aside, the region has strong urbanist bones in ways that many US cities do not (or perhaps used to but no longer do).

The TTC subway may be smaller than it should be in an ideal world, but it's still a good start from which to build, and build on it they plan to. 

I remember being impressed by the bus/tram/subway integration when I first visited in 2002, not because it was perfect but because it was intelligible in a way Seattle's then was not: even as a teen I could figure out how to get from place to place (and this is pre-smartphone!) and use the connections between transit modes to navigate effectively.

If I could do it as a visiting teen two decades ago, I gotta believe that's a benefit if you move there as an adult now.

And since I insisted above that you should treat the whole GTA and/or Horseshoe here, I do think that the multicentral nature of that region is meaningful. York FC (supporters pictured above) isn't Toronto FC, and York isn't Toronto (let alone further-dispersed centers like Mississauga, St. Catherine's, or even Niagara). While this sprawl can have its own flaws, the idea of integrating these places while still allowing them their own local flavor and relevance is a promising one, and if the region can pull it off then there would be some major benefits to an almost Randstad-like system (stay tuned for some thoughts on the Randstad in the Netherlands later in this series). 

All of this is to say that there's real potential in the GTA for growth and integration that can make it a better place to live--especially for immigrants, for whom that kind of marginal geographic location is often a reality. 

Canada will continue to be a difficult place to find a job if you're not a permanent resident or citizen (and also in current economic conditions for many of them). It will continue not to be the United States-lite or anything like it. But the GTA is a real option if you're looking for a region with great potential for a significant upward trajectory of urbanism built off a historic base that's high compared to the US.