Imagining the City

John Sewell’s brief book, A New City Agenda, proper roles and responsibilities for a Canadian big city. If you do not like the present, imagine the future—which is just what Sewell has done for Toronto.

We do not like the present. In the last census, Canada’s four big urban regions—those centred on Vancouver, Calgary/Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal—were home to one half the Canadian population, with an ever more rapidly growing share projected through the coming decades. Toronto alone absorbs one half of all new immigrants to the country; less than a fifth go to everywhere outside the big four regions. Before the next census, a majority of Torontonians will be both foreign-born and members of a visible minority. There is and never has been any place like the city in the world, let alone in Canada—except for Vancouver. The future social character and demography of Canada are clear to anyone who has taken a bus or subway or streetcar in a big city lately, or...