This is Toronto

This is Toronto on Smog
 

Many questions?

A 2008 analysis of Green Economic Development for Toronto - “People, Planet & Profit; Catalyzing Economic Growth & Environmental Quality in the City of Toronto” - concludes “The Vision for Toronto to be the Greatest and Greenest of the World’s big cities is not far off”.

Yet Toronto has a history and future of significant air, land, built and water challenges to address in their environment. And, about half of the pollutants that cause smog in the Toronto region come from the U.S., meaning Ohioans effect Toronto's air quality nearly as much as Torontonians.

Toronto has discovered how to be the Greatest and Greenest under difficult environmental citcumstances, largely beyond local control. Exploring how that is possible, from a holistic, general systems perspective that considers the needs of society, the economy and the environment, offers valuable lessons for all communities and global society .

The first lesson to learn is the government of Toronto has excellent understanding and management of an enormous field of metrics and indicators found embedded in initiatives, generated through strategic planning, and captured from innumerable public and private data sources, including through interaction with citizens.

To consider how this relates to the value of the “Green Economy”, consider Toronto's “People, Planet & Profit” finds:

The growing demand for environmental goods and services represents a tremendous business development opportunity for Toronto companies.  Annual global environmental markets have surpassed the $US 1 trillion level, as a multitude of drivers converge, driving demand for innovative clean solutions to new heights. In Canada, the market has surpassed $35 billion annually. Over 6000 Canadian firms, employing over 250,000 people provide innovative ‘green’ solutions that generate both financial and environmental benefits to buyers around the world. 

Regarding Toronto's potential to benefit from their already thriving Green Economy:
 
Perhaps we are closer to achieving this green greatness than we think. Toronto has all the tools, networks, and people to make this green dream possible.  The public and private sectors within the city of Toronto have a number of innovative initiatives underway that are: catalyzing sustainability in the City;  providing the foundation for a successful green industry sector; and  contributing to Toronto’s effort to becoming recognized globally as a green urban centre.

Regarding the current state of the Green Economy in Toronto:

Toronto has a significant concentration of firms in the environmental sector that will form the basis for future growth and support environmental innovation across all sectors of the economy.  There is a strong history of environmental business within the city core and the surrounding area including a strong presence of more traditional environmental companies in the areas of engineering consulting, law, waste management, and remediation.  However, the landscape continues to evolve. 
 
Many policy initiatives and market forces in the city (and province) such as the green buildings partnership has encouraged the growth of companies in areas such as energy efficiency, demand side management, green building architecture/design and high end consulting firms.  Other more innovative technology solution providers (e.g. clean energy) and high-value service firms (e.g. green financial investment) have also emerged and are expanding in number and size within Toronto. 
 
At present, it is estimated that there are over 1,000 organizations residing in the City of Toronto whose primary business is in the environment and clean energy sectors or they are offering a ‘green’ element to their main product or service line.  These activities are likely generating over 20,000 jobs and $2 billion of revenue annually for the local economy.  More specifically:
 

• Approximately 2/3 of these are service firms and1/3 technology or product companies
• Over 90% of these companies are considered small with fewer than 100 employees;
• An estimated 15% of these companies are exporting with more than ¾ of export sales going to the U.S.

Along with specific recommendations for action, the report stresses:

The go-forward action plan should lead to: coordinated and unified goals and targets linked to other city departments; implementation of specific actions that will achieve the desired goals of this green economic sector development plan; and measurement of successes that can be communicated to all stakeholders. 

The core actions centre around: stimulating a green market demand; enhancing and leveraging partnerships with existing networks; marketing the “Toronto Advantage”, leading by example, educating and expanding the workforce, and supporting existing business.

Toronto’s Green Economic Sector Development Vision, proposed in “People, Planet & Profit”:
 
To become a globally recognized green industry hub that generates social, environmental, and economic value to the City, local industry and its residences while stimulating the continued growth and sustainability of established businesses.

How did Toronto become a world-leader developing and implementing such intuitive and responsive strategies for regeneration and economic growth, in times of global warming, when their region is struggling with climate change and much of their own environmental hardship is beyond their direct control?

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Toronto began a formal, strategic environmental regeneration process over a decade ago, with the foundation belief “that governments, in partnership with citizens and stakeholders, should set the agenda for protecting and enhancing the natural environment”, as stated by the City of Toronto Environmental Task Force (ETF), created by City Council in March 1998 to develop the City’s first-ever Environmental Plan, Clean, Green and Healthy, A Plan for an Environmentally Sustainable Toronto, published by ETF in 2000.

As stated in the report's introduction:

The approach taken by the ETF was to go beyond environmental protection and enhancement to address the larger issue of environmental sustainability. This issue is an important one for the City of Toronto, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), nationally and internationally. As noted in 1991 by David Crombie in Regeneration, the Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Environment:

“Half the world’s people will live in urban areas by the end of this decade. Whether we achieve a greater degree of environmental sustainability over that time will therefore be determined largely by our cities. Surely, sustainability is not possible in the long term unless we can soon find ways to regenerate our urban ecosystems, keep them in good health, and adopt more sustainable lifestyles”.

This was the challenge taken up by the Environmental Task Force.

The scope and importance of the challenge in explained in the background section of Clean, Green and Healthy:

For many years, Toronto has enjoyed a reputation as a vibrant and eminently liveable city. With the amalgamation of seven former municipalities into the City of Toronto on January 1, 1998, the fledgling City began the process of re-inventing itself. Borrowing the best from the past, the newly amalgamated City began to develop the vital strategies that would lead it into the 21st century. These strategies will be expressed as the City’s Official Plan, its Strategic Plan, and its Environmental Plan.

The Preface of this Environmental Plan describes the process taken to develop this plan, which should be appreciated by any community attempting to match this accomplishment:

The City of Toronto Environmental Task Force (the ETF) was created by City Council in March 1998 in the belief that governments, in partnership with citizens and stakeholders,should set the agenda for protecting and enhancing the natural environment. The ETF was made up of City Councillors, City staff, representatives from environmental agencies and citizens representing business, labour and environmental groups, school boards, universities and schools across Toronto.

The fundamental objective of the ETF was to prepare a comprehensive Environmental Plan for the City.

Clean, Green and Healthy: A Plan for an Environmentally Sustainable Toronto (the Environmental Plan) is the result of 22 months of work by the ETF and many other people. It contains a Vision for an environmentally sustainable future, a Sustainability Goal, a set of
Environmental Principles to guide decision-making, and a series of recommendations aimed at improving the health of the natural environment. It also contains a list of interim indicators for
monitoring environmental performance, and recommendations on governance structures and processes that will help build environmental considerations into decision-making processes.

The development of the Environmental Plan began with a series of workshops that were hosted by the ETF in September 1998. These workshops,attended by 100 participants, identified priority issues for the ETF to address, and over 200 potential “Quick Start”actions to improve the health of the environment. Thirty-four of these Quick Start actions were later forwarded by the ETF to City Council and appropriate City departments, and many were subsequently approved by City Council (see Appendix B).

Also in September 1998, the ETF hosted a Vision and Priority Setting Workshop. The outcome of this workshop was a Sustainability Goal, a Vision for a sustainable future, and a set of Environmental Principles to guide decision-making (see section 3.0).

In developing the Environmental Plan,the ETF chose four areas to work in that it believed would help move the City towards sustainability.

These areas were:

• transportation
• energy use
  
• economic development
  
• education and awareness
  

These areas were selected because they echoed many of the key themes that were raised in the early workshops and include issues that City Council had asked the ETF to work on. They also represented issues in which work is not currently being carried out in a comprehensive way and in which the ETF felt it could play an important role in bringing players together.

To address the above issues, the ETF created the Sustainable Transportation, Sustainable Energy, Green Economy and Education and Awareness Work Groups. The Work Groups were charged with identifying gaps in the coverage of sustainability issues, developing objectives and targets, and identifying policies, strategies and actions to move towards environmental sustainability.

The Work Group Reports are published under separate cover (see Appendix E), and their findings are included in the Environmental Plan in sections 6.0 (Moving Towards Sustainability) and 7.0 (Education and Awareness).

The Work Groups also prepared Directories that list local businesses and organizations working or providing goods and services in these areas. The Directories are posted on the ETF website.

Part of the ETF’s mandate was to recommend a governance structure that would incorporate advanced environmental decision-making into the political and administrative structure of the City. After ten months of discussion, the ETF released a consultation document, “Towards Advanced Decision-Making in the City of Toronto”, which outlined the Task Force’s ideas on sustainability and governance. The document was widely distributed and feedback was solicited on it. Over 200 people commented on the document in writing or at workshops, and the ETF subsequently developed a recommended governance model, which was adopted by City Council in December 1999. The recommendations are included in section 8.0 (Planning, Management and Governance).

The ETF also set up an Indicator Work Group to look at environmental and sustainability monitoring, evaluation and reporting. Its findings are included in section 9.0 of this Plan (Measuring and Reporting Progress).

Involvement of the broad community was a fundamental part of the development of the Environmental Plan. To inform people about the ETF’s work, a newsletter was developed and four issues of it were prepared and widely distributed. The newsletter was a major tool to inform people about ETF activities and progress. All sectors of the community – citizens, business, agencies and environmental organizations - were encouraged to take part in workshops, governance meetings, monthly ETF meetings, or in the Work Groups. In total, about 1,300 people participated in Environmental Task Force activities.

Clean, Green and Healthy is a shared vision for how to get to a cleaner, greener, healthier and more sustainable future. It is a strategic document that contains recommendations about goals, targets, policies, strategies, structures and processes that will lead us in the direction of environmental sustainability. It sets direction in many (but not all) key areas and builds on the environmental protection and enhancement efforts being carried out by the City, other agencies, and hundreds of individuals and organizations in all sectors of society.

This has positioned Toronto to become a great world city-region that is clean, green, healthy and thriving

Throughout the last decade, early environmental planning has evolved into Change is in the Air, described below:

Toronto's bold new Climate Change, Clean Air and Sustainable Energy Action Plan (PDF) will see the City of Toronto and its residents, businesses and communities take action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, clean the air and create a sustainable energy future.

The plan was crafted with substantial public and stakeholder input and is designed to achieve and exceed the Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction target.

In addition to actions to green the City's internal operations, the plan outlines a number of actions that will benefit residents, businesses and community groups including:

• a Live Green Toronto program to encourage Torontonians to adopt more environmentally friendly lifestyles and reduce energy use at home, work and on the road
• a framework to renew Toronto's concrete high-rise residential buildings
• a pilot program for residential solar hot water heating
• a "one-window" source of information on federal, provincial, municipal, private sector and community programs related to energy and the environment
• a plan to promote local food production and increase community gardens
• community energy planning
• a plan to double Toronto's tree canopy
• the development of a strategy to adapt to climate change
• a plan to shift taxis and limousines to low emission or hybrid technology.

The plan calls for initial funding of $42 million for energy conservation measures, $20 million for renewable energy projects and $22 million for retrofitting City facilities.

Toronto's current department level invironmental initiatives are found on the city website here.

Toronto's early, real, community-wide commitment to being clean, green, and healthy is why Toronto may now be the greatest, greenest big city in the world... their investment in their environment has paid off in $ billions of economic activity, a healthier, more livable environment, and more socially conscious and environmentally responsible citizens, positioning Toronto for greatness with more than just the Green Economy.

Toronto government's strong appreciation for the interrelationships of economy, environment and society in a well-manged community has attracted global talent and innovativeness that has transformed the region.

According to the Toronto Region Research Alliance’s second Annual Toronto Region Innovation Gauge (ATRIG), “The Toronto Region has an innovative research base with a highly-educated and growing population that benefits from a diversified manufacturing base and other major advantages compared to its competition.”

Their report “analyzes the current strengths and weaknesses of the region relative to other regions with strong research bases, like Silicon Valley in California and Massachusetts, and to more comparable research centres, like the Research Triangle in North Carolina, Montreal, Illinois and Michigan.”

There through you find, even in the weak 2008/9 global economy, Toronto continues to attract and retain an increasingly skilled workforce, from around the world, who innovate and transform the community in powerful ways. This is confirmed by data tracked by regional leadership, as illustrated by the charts and analyses below.

The population of the Toronto Region is growing rapidly, fueled by an influx of skilled, educated immigrants from around the world. The region’s economy benefits from diverse industrial sectors outside its traditional manufacturing base (including “fast” companies with strong potential for growth), solid employment levels, superior wages and healthy household income.

The Toronto Region has high levels of post-secondary and post-graduate education in the 25-34 age range, with recent Business, Science and Technology graduates poised to become the next generation of managers and entrepreneurs.

This ongoing performance benchmarking effort offers some valuable data, analyses and indicators for community development planning, which looks beyond any one industry sector or place to the drivers of overall regional innovation and global competitiveness.

And this chart from ATRIG (also shown at beginning of this analysis) shows that the Toronto Region has a wide range of industrial sectors

The X-axis of this graph shows its Location Quotient (LQ)– the employment concentration of industry clusters in the Toronto Region compared to the same industry clusters across North America. Industries with a LQ of one are performing at the average level. Those with a score higher than one have a higher competitive advantage. The chart also shows that salaries are high in many of the region’s larger and stronger sectors. The relative size of the sphere shows the number of people employed in the sector, and many sectors in the region are quite large.

Meric Gertler, Dean of Arts and Science, University of Toronto is quoted by ATRIG as observing, “…what you’re looking at here is really a story of diversity versus one of specialization.”

A comparable analysis of the same metrics for Silicon Valley shows how different two regions may be.

Comparing between multiple regions offers great value and insight for improving community effectiveness, but it is important that comparisons are “Apples to Apples”, relevant and insightful, and that requires experimentation with a broad set of data.

Another way ATRIG compares Toronto and other regions is the relative impact of scientific publications, as measured by Average Relative Impact Factor (a weighted measure of citations in science and social science journals that demonstrates the importance of a journal to its field). Toronto and Montreal are both at the bottom of this field, below all American “comparable” regions, indicating being in Canada has some impact on this analysis.

Another ATRIG analysis of a related outcome of innovativeness, Total Licenses,Patents (Applications and Issued), and Invention Disclosures, Universities and Hospitals, per 100,000 Population, in 2006, shows similar poor performance by the Canadians.

If we put these adjusted results in a scatterplot, the impression of Toronto is poor – and Canadian regions appear to be far underperforming American regions for reasonable innovation outcomes... and inputs!

An ATRIG regional R&D investment analysis surfaces what their report concludes is the driver of “poor” innovation outcomes in Canada - Toronto and Montreal have too low of levels of R&D spending, as compared to spending in the US regions – leading to their recommendations:

THE BOTTOM LINE

• The Toronto Region needs R&D investment from the federal and provincial governments to strengthen the R&D infrastructure and build a base upon which to train graduate students and attract R&D-intense industries as partners
• The Toronto Region needs to attract more R&D-intensive companies
• The Toronto Region needs to look at barriers to R&D in the region and in general

While these outcomes may be desirable, when we look at the ATRIG data a different way we may reach different impressions about the performance of the Canadians. Consider this analysis of the ARTIG data, not part of the ARTIG Study.

Considering a scatterplot of the same measures of Innovation outcomes, adjusted for the levels of R&D spending in each region, Montreal is the Best Performer, followed by Toronto. This is a measure of Innovation outcomes relative to input, and it appears Canadian regions produce more Innovation outcomes per R&D dollar, which seems more impressive than raw output at all costs.

As the world and our global and local economies change, in individual places and as a global system, it is interesting to consider what is needed of innovation changes for the future? It is interesting to consider how regions that performed well in the past, like Research Triangle, may fail in the future, as world cities few people consider “Innovative” grow to dominate certain sectors of the economy, and larger shares of the world economy follow.

As healthcare becomes more socialized, regions with economies centered on innovation in that field, and prosperity through medical R&D, may find their economies unsustainable. As climate change impacts global economies, regions centered on leadership in that field will see their economies thrive.

By any measures, Toronto has positioned itself well for the future of the world economy, and can prove it.

And the best measures of that are found at the City of Toronto.

The reports referenced above and many others are rooted at the city of Toronto Economic Development web portal, offering excellent analyses of Toronto city and metropolitan area trends and issues. Found within 1,000s of pages of reports and presentations, and at many linked websites, are many indicators of the successes and challenges faced by this government, over many years.

From the City website:

Economic Development staff maintains up-to-date and comprehensive economic information and business-related statistics to assist business.

Together with local businesses and other stakeholders, staff create economic development strategies to facilitate economic growth and initiatives that could benefit the city's economy.

Over decades of strategic planning effort, Toronto has demonstrated a rich understanding of performance benchmarks and embedded them in all core action plans, with strict measurement and reporting processes, tracking outcomes over time and relative to comparable market subjects, like similar or “Best in Class” regions.

For Toronto, “Best in Class” regions are the best in the world, and their view of their competition is global.

The City of Toronto Economic Development Department maintains a wide range of timely and historical data of value in analyzing the effectiveness of the region, and publishes monthly reports of findings.

Their January 2009 report features their 2008 data on patents worldwide, placing Toronto 17th. Clearly, this data should be analyzed relative to other factors, like R&D spending.

Between all the data, indicators and analyses found through Toronto about their economic development, there is a treasure-trove of insight. This insight is readily available, via city government, and is thorough and informative, but it is at times difficult to locate and interpret.

The 1998 amalgamation of Toronto into a larger city-region, and formalizing a huge metropolitan area, appears to have driven multiple strategic planning cycles, at all levels of government, often with outside consultant intervention, leaving a confusing trail of major initiatives and visions distributed throughout the many departments of government, through special roundtables and forums, making the outsider unclear what are the current priorities and drivers of change in the community, and who is responsible for which outcomes in the economy, environment and society.

Ultimately, the visitor to the city website is left wondering where the city ends, the region begins, what are the priorities for each, and are all factors working in harmony.

Astoundingly, despite any questions, the ultimate answer appears to be yes, all factors are working in harmony.

The big solutions seems to come from the city-region taking a holistic, general systems approach to economic development, engaging citizens, following consistent community-wide processes to implement changes, embedding changes in the system at the functional level, and measuring performance system-wide, over time and relative to competition.

While the system-wide measures are not clearly integrated into a publicly available enterprise wide information management or analysis systems, proper controls and processes appear to be in place, working, and in use. That remains to be confirmed.

It appears good general systems strategic planning, measurement of performance, and world-class initiative is found supporting all aspects of the Toronto economy, society and environment, leading to continuous innovation in how Toronto is governed for the next generations.

An outstanding example of this is found by returning to a minor aspect of the development of Toronto's Green Economy, rooted at the Economic Development Department's “Climate Change Adaption” web portal, which states “Work is underway to develop a strategy to prepare Toronto for the long-lasting changes in weather patterns that are caused by climate change.”

While some communities still question the existence of man-influenced climate change, Toronto Mayor David Miller states:

"While mitigation remains on the forefront of our climate change agenda, it's clear that we must take action now to adapt to the realities of climate change that we see today, and the realities we will see with greater intensity in the future.

National governments are falling behind in taking action on this important issue so it's up to cities to act and that's what Toronto is committed to doing."

With the City of Toronto initiating planning in 2007, and producing an action plan in 2008 - Ahead of the Storm: Preparing Toronto for Climate Change – Toronto has already identified a series of actions to improve Toronto’s resilience to climate change including:

• A series of short-term actions beginning in 2008 that will help prevent and/or minimize the impacts of climate change in Toronto
• A series of actions that will guide the City’s development of a comprehensive, long-term strategy to adapt to climate change.

Ahead of the Storm was unanimously endorsed by City Council in July, 2008.

From the supporting web portal:

Examples of actions that will make our infrastructure and buildings more resilient to climate change and improve the city's overall sustainability include:

• planting more trees to increase shade and clean and cool the air
• using rain barrels to capture rainwater for reuse
  
• using permeable surfaces (rather than asphalt for example) to reduce runoff from heavy rainfalls
  
• landscaping with drought-resistant plants and
  
• using cool/reflective materials on the roofs of homes and buildings to reduce urban heat

Ahead of the Storm is an outcome of “Change is in the Air: Toronto's Climate Change, Clean Air and Sustainable Energy Action Plan", which was unanimously endorsed by Council in July 2007, and set in motion Toronto's bold and ambitious climate change agenda. The plan includes more than 100 actions to reduce the greenhouse gas and smog-causing emissions which contribute to climate change. It also recommended the development of a comprehensive strategy to adapt to the long-term changes in our weather patterns that are already underway.”

Demonstrating their general systems implementation effectiveness in action, in support of initiatives of “Ahead of the Storm”, the city's building's department has prepared “design guidelines for “greening” surface parking lots”, and everything else mandated in the climate change adaption plan, as illuastrated below.

As impressive as all this appears, to really understand why Toronto is becoming the greatest and greenest big city in the world, and is world-class in so many other aspects of economic development, and overall quality of place, one must return to the foundation of the development of Toronto's first environmental plan: “that governments, in partnership with citizens and stakeholders, should set the agenda for protecting and enhancing the natural environment”.

Natural environment is core to quality of place, which attracts and retains effective human capital, which are core to Economic Competitiveness, as illustrated below, from the 2007 City of Toronto report on “Economic Development in World Cities”.

What is greatest about Toronto is its human capital, best illustrated by one metric: 2,000 apples, as explained in the following Press Release from TEA – the Toronto Environmental Alliance:

Toronto Council says “Yes!” to Local Food and Farmers
Posted October 31st, 2008 by tea

For Immediate Release                                                     October 31, 2008

TORONTO – Late yesterday, Toronto City Council adopted a new policy that will have the City dramatically increase its purchase of local food for its daycares, shelters and seniors’ homes over the next few years.

“This is a major victory for the environment, for farmers, for the Greenbelt and for Torontonians,” said Jamie Kirkpatrick, campaigner for the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA). “The City of Toronto, the sixth largest government in Canada, is the first to adopt a policy to progressively increase its purchase of local food to 50% as soon as possible.”

Over the next year, city daycares will increase their purchase of local food by 40%. In the meantime, city staff will develop a plan to figure out how other city departments can buy 50% local food as soon as possible.

“This policy is a clear signal to farmers in the GTA, the Greenbelt - indeed in all of Ontario- that Toronto wants their food,” says Charles Stevens, of Wilmot Orchards who earlier this month donated 2,000 apples to Toronto City Councillors, one for each Torontonian who signed a petition in support of local food.

Earlier this month, TEA submitted over 2,000 signatures from Torontonians calling on City Council to adopt a local food procurement policy. “It’s nice to see that City Councillors agree with Torontonians that buying local food first is better than buying jet-lagged food,” said Kirkpatrick.

Local food helps the environment by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from transporting food from far away. As well as being fresher, local food also helps the local economy, local farmers and helps preserve agricultural land in the Greenbelt and surrounding areas.

To promote community support and put public pressure on the city Council deciding the fate of this Green Development economy, environment and social issue, TEA delivered to council the 2,000 locally-grown apples mentioned above – one representing each Torontonian who signed a petition supporting this legislation.

From the TEA Website:

This is a huge step forward for the environment, for the Greenbelt and for Ontario’s farmers. This victory would not have been possible without the clear message sent by more than 2,000 Torontonians who signed our petition and postcards telling Councillors to Avoid Jet-Lagged Food and Buy Local First! Thanks to all of you for help with this important victory!

That is but one victory for TEA, in over 20 years...

Since 1988 TEA has been campaigning locally to find solutions to Toronto's urban environmental problems.

Our Mission is to promote a greener Toronto. We work with concerned individuals, community groups, professionals and workers, encouraging the participation of local people on local issues.

Our Vision of a healthy community is based on equity, access, safety and a clean environment.

Through a grass roots organization, an investment by citizens of 2,000 signatures and apples drove a change in government policy leading to $1,000,000s in new Green Economy development... that seems as good a return on investment as any economic development processes will ever create, and that is what happens freely and openly every day in the great, green, innovative, world-class city-region of Toronto.