Strong cities drive national economy (in Canada)

From an editorial in the Toronto Star:

A major new national report on building successful cities is adding a fresh and welcome impetus to the campaign seeking a "new deal" for Canada's large urban areas. Officially released today, the report by the Conference Board of Canada underlines the vital role of cities in maintaining national prosperity. The document, entitled Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities, points to changes that are necessary to shore-up our biggest cities and, by extension, to bolster the entire country.

"Helping our major cities is a win-win for all of us," Conference Board president Anne Golden told the Star's editorial board yesterday. Large cities around the world and their surrounding regions have emerged as centres of the modern knowledge economy. They are where immigrants come together and where new design and artistic ideas emerge. They are hives of financial activity, education, culture and trends. In short, our big cities represent the best hope for a prosperous future.

Unfortunately, Canada's large cities also face oversized problems, including a need to support costly mass transit and other infrastructure, to settle waves of new immigrants, shelter the homeless, and deal with strong competition from aggressive urban centres in other countries...

In light of these pressures, new money must be channelled specifically to Canada's big cities. Golden rightly argued that smaller centres can thrive only when major cities are in sound health. Despite that reality, large urban areas, especially Toronto, have been shortchanged and often cannot cover the cost of the many services they are called upon to provide.

"The real fiscal imbalance in this country is at the municipal level," Golden said. Of all revenues collected by governments in Canada, the provinces and territories pull down almost 50 per cent; Ottawa gets 39 per cent, while municipalities are left with less than 12 per cent. Yet cities are where the action is. They are the economic engines driving the economy.

The fundamental burden hampering cities is their reliance on property taxes as their main revenue source. That provides a limited pool of dollars. The senior levels of government can tap much more lucrative income taxes and sales-related taxes that grow quickly with the economy. Conference Board research shows that the fiscal health of Canada's big cities will only worsen if property taxes remain their main source of money. ...
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DC collects income tax from its residents. That's why the city needs (1) more tax paying residents and (2) a greater proportion of city residents working within the city (currently 70% of people working on jobs in DC do not live in DC).

Note that to access the above-cited report, you might be subjected to an incredibly clunky registration process at the Conference Board of Canada.

Speaking of regional and strategic thinking, check out this series of articles, Community Think Tank, from the Berkshire Eagle about visioning planning and land use in the Berkshires area of Western Massachusetts.