In 2010, Toronto voted for its new mayor, Rob Ford, like so:
It was basically the core of the city (old Toronto) versus all of the boroughs. And it was perfect ammunition for anyone who believed that Toronto’s amalgamation was a mistake. (I personally don’t think it was.)
Yesterday, Toronto did better.
While we’re still a divided city — with Etobicoke and Scarborough largely remaining loyal to Ford Nation — we’re not quite as divided as we were 4 years ago:
However, there is one thing that Torontonians did largely agree on last night: the next mayor should be white and male. And this got the Guardian Cities out of the UK asking why one of the most multicultural cities on the planet (apparently we’re third behind Luxembourg City and Dubai), continues to elect middle-aged white guys.
Now, I’m not a fan of the article. And I take offence to the way Toronto is portrayed. But it did get me thinking. And I thought it would be interesting to see how some of Toronto’s demographic data overlays on top of these election maps.
Looking at 2006 census data (2011 isn’t available in map form yet), here is a map showing the total number of visible minorities broken down by census tract. The darker the red the more visible minorities.
And here is a map showing immigrants as a percentage of the population. Again, the darker the red, the higher the percentage.
What should be apparent from these maps is that Ford Nation is actually, in some ways, immigrant and visible minority nation. In the above map, the darkest red areas indicate that immigrants represent anywhere from 65-80% of the population. That’s a significant number.
So why didn’t this group vote for the Hong Kong-born Olivia Chow? It’s because she wasn’t telling them the right story. Rob and Doug Ford, on the other hand, were.
Today is municipal election day in Toronto.
About 8 months ago I publicly announced here on ATC who I would be supporting, and my position hasn’t changed. I was disappointed by the fact that he ended up backing away from his initial promise of a true downtown relief subway line (see blog post), but I nonetheless continue to support his candidacy.
In the words of Mike “Pinball” Clemons, he’s “the right man at the right time.” Click here if you can’t see the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouqv782giyw]
But I’m not here to try and sway your vote. That is ultimately your decision. However, I am here to encourage you to get out and vote. Regardless of who you might be supporting, I think it’s important that you get out and take a position. So I hope you do that today.
Happy Monday!
This morning I woke up to a post from venture capitalist Fred Wilson talking about the cost of loyalty when it comes to local transportation markets. More simply, it was a cost comparison between regular city taxis and ride sharing services such as a UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.
The data was sourced from whatsthefare.com and looks like this:
The way to understand this chart is to think about it as the answer to this question (from whatsthefare.com): If I were to take 1,000 rides over my lifetime with one individual service, how much more would I pay than if I compared prices and always picked the cheapest option?
What you should immediately see is that regular taxis are far more expensive in San Francisco and Los Angeles compared to all of the ride sharing services. In the words of Fred Wilson: “That is crazy. They are going to go out of business in those markets with that pricing.”
In my words: They are fucked.
I wonder where Toronto would place against these cities. My gut tells me that we would be closer to San Francisco than New York. And if that is the case, I think you can figure out what that means.
I thought this would be an interesting post given yesterday’s point about our cities being multi-modal. We urbanites have many more options at our disposal than we did only a few years ago. And if they’re cheaper and more convenient, we’re going to use them. I think that’s a good thing.