Diverging Neighbors

This chapter compares Buffalo, New York, and Toronto, Ontario, two urban areas located on the Great Lakes with similar populations (one million) in 1950. Toronto has since passed the six million mark, while Buffalo seems trapped in a seemingly irreversible cycle of economic decline. The diverging destiny of the two cities has many roots (e.g., the St. Lawrence Seaway, the collapse of Big Steel) but invariably sends us back to the different political cultures of the United States and Canada. The government of Ontario stepped in early in the urbanization process to impose a model of metropolitan governance on the Toronto region, with the explicit aim of deterring the emergence of deep social divides, specifically between city and suburb, and ensuring the maintenance of a strong central core. The state of New York did no such thing in Buffalo, for which Buffalo continues to pay a price.