Since 2010, Toronto's headlines have been consumed by the outrageous
personal foibles and government-slashing, anti-urbanist policies of
Mayor Rob Ford. But the heated debate at City Hall has obscured a
bigger, decade-long narrative of Toronto's ascendance as a mature global
city. Some Great Idea traces how post-amalgamation, and under three
very different mayors, Toronto managed to so quickly oscillate from one
extreme to another, and how the city might proceed from here. Some
Great Idea includes behind-the-scenes tales from the Miller and Ford
campaigns, and explores recent turning points like the city's core
service review and the mayor's conflict-of-interest trial. Through
personal history, keen reportage and revelatory analysis, it shows how
the fundamental principles of diversity and democracy that have made
Toronto such a vibrant, dynamic 21st-century city can produce an
unlikely politician like Ford. And how those same principles have
vividly and repeatedly insisted that such politicians are only part of a
larger, messier and more productive urban politics. This is a story
about both Toronto's past and present, how the city has relentlessly and
collaboratively reinvented itself. But it's also a story about Toronto's
future, and what that future might mean for all global cities.
