I don’t know about you, but I’ve been following thestar.com’s Your City My City blog series. And in ways its a great start at an ongoing discussion about the future of Toronto. There are regular posts from a variety of perspectives and people can post comments without having to register like you do on the main site. That’s good thinking. Making it easy to engage in the conversation is huge. 
They are highlighting interesting ideas to stimulate conversation, such as the recent comment to turn University Avenue into a pedestrian magnet. Comments ranged, not surprisingly, from the expected “Are you crazy?” to “Yes! and Yonge street too!” But I wonder if the Star’s welcome effort is going to get anything more than the entrenchment of existing views about the city.
It appears, however, that it lacks a framework of sorts. The blogs are about Toronto, but they seem to all circle back to current experiences and pet peeves. But isn’t the point to talk about the future – rather than to debate the status quo? The risk is that the series degenerates into a back and forth between complainers and detractors on one side, and the boosters on the other, without enough thought given to what kind of city we’ll be leaving to our kids.
Setting up a framework for the discussion wouldn’t be that difficult. It would also be great to engage the citizens in the process. For example, the first two weeks could have focused on canvassing Torontonians in an open ended way about what they think about Toronto’s future, and what kind of city they would like to see 10 years from now. It could have been done in some interesting ways – for example with roving videographers, which could have been posted on a YouTube channel. That kind of framework – Toronto in 10 years – could get the discussion out of the “fix the potholes” discussion and into the realm of vision, without it being so far down the road that its all pie in the sky stuff.
But the Star is making an effort. And it is a good start. It would be nice to see more comments (rarely does a post crack 10 comment). It would be great if citizens could post other media – images, video and audio. Sure its possible to link to those types of things via comments, but creating an interface would make it that much easier for the non-technologically inclined.
One of the articles I read bemoaned the lack of visionary thinking at city hall and in the business community when if comes to Toronto. But I don’t think vision is limited to those groups. Given the right framework, regular citizens might be inspired to offer a vision of Toronto in the future that is both tremendously creative and compellingly practical.
