Word of the day: Gentrification
When our city talks about what our downtown or city core needs, why does the word gentrification rarely come up.
In my view the core starting with Downtown desperately needs gentrification. The affordable housing stock in Windsor is great enough to take decades for any negative consequences to even surface. Drawing new residents is only half the battle, drawing a proportion of them from a higher demographic would spur even more development.
So what are the first steps. Usually, I simply google. When typing in “how to gentrify” A link to Wikipedia said this (abridged for space)
Sharon Zukin refers to a somewhat contradictory “Artistic Mode of Production” wherein patrician capitalists seek to revaluate (that is, gentrify) urban space through the recruitment and retention of artists; that is, by subtle or overt means of encouraging artists to occupy, say, former industrial facilities (1989, 176). This has become public policy in some cities. …cities ….have attempted to artificially stimulate the process of gentrification…Property developers have noticed that taking a building they eventually wish to re-develop and offering it cheaply to artists for a few years can impart a ‘hip’ feel to the surrounding area.
In the US, municipal governments tend to use tax incentives such as “tax increment financing” (TIF), or, , municipal governments will partner with non-profit organizations and Public Private Partnerships to offer to artists subsidized home loans at a discounted interest rate if they move into gentrifying neighborhoods. Under a TIF program, economic activity in a target blighted area will be jump started with government spending, usually on physical infrastructure. Property values, and therefore property tax revenues, are then expected to rise. Under TIF’s, all increased tax revenues, for a set number of years, go to the TIF administration entity, and can only be spent on additional improvements within the TIF district. Often TIF funds will be provided as direct subsidies to private sector developers. Infrastructure improvements, subsidies, and rising property values all combine to encourage additional private sector investment.
So there you have it. Do we want Gentrification? If we do then action has to be taken.
Dave Kopec an Environmental Psychologist says it a bit different. He claims there are only 3 ways to gentrify. Publicy funded, Privately funded and Community
Publicly Funded - I wish we had the will
Privately funded- Who, when, Personally believe there is no will of developers who are lured away to the suburbs and county through shortsighted land use policies
Community Initiated - community-initiated gentrification is not an easy task to plan because it depends on the perception and ambition of the existing constituency with regard to their future.
Basically, The rest of the article (exerpt below) says that perception and ambition of existing residents, combined with gov’t incentives are the answer. Maybe the residents association is a beginning to this but we need to get the city on board by completing the Community Improvement Plans (CIP’s) either RFP or College Campus for City Center West As well as unshelving the “Sustainable Downtown CIP”
P.S. on a positive note about gas prices I ran into a downtown landlord who said he’d rented an apartment to his first casino worker who stated they couldn’t afford the drive in from the county any longer.
P.P.S. Drudge report headline this morning “Bush warns Arab Leaders: You’re running out of oil…”
Article Excerpt
The last form of gentrification is one that is not planned, but evolves with the community constituency. This form of gentrification occurs when community members take the initiative to renovate properties one at a time until the majority of the community has been rehabilitated.
One of the communities that has repeatedly shown success with community-initiated gentrification is the gay and lesbian community. Much of the success experienced by the gay and lesbian community has been attributed to a typically higher than average disposable income, more free time to explore creative talents, and the traditionally tight community bonds. In the recent past, the gay and lesbian community have adopted areas where there is a high elder constituency with properties in decay. The selection of these areas has to do with a perceived sense of safety, the typically ornate architecture of older homes, and the ability for the lower income gays and lesbians to reside within the community. Since the 1960’s the gay and lesbian community has successfully gentrified communities throughout the nation without the immediate negative impacts as other forms of gentrification.
When we look at all of the gentrification occurring in the new millennium it is clearly best to look at gentrification that has been community initiated. This method is a win situation for the residents, developers, and the city. However, community-initiated gentrification is not an easy task to plan because it depends on the perception and ambition of the existing constituency with regard to their future.
Knowing that the gays and lesbians have been so successful due in part because of greater disposable incomes, cities might consider bigger tax breaks for those wishing to rehabilitate property. These tax breaks can be amortized over several years ensuring that increased maintenance occurs periodically in order to receive these tax credits. Clearly, dismantling entire communities for redevelopment is not the most socially ethical method, and random developments with the intent of sparking gentrification is useless when the community is not involved and has many unintended consequences that call social ethics into consideration.
Gentrification is not an easy or quick process, but done correctly and with patience it can have longer lasting results.
Post Feedback
I’ve heard that gentrification rarely comes up in city council discussions because any attempt to gentrify the core represents a threat to members of city council who rely on the financial support of landlords who make a fortune renting badly dilapidated properties to low-income families that are powerless when the landlord decides to defer maintenance and milk the property for every dime. Case in point: Windsor Court Apartments.
Mark, I’ve always respected your opinion, agree or not.
I’d tend to think most of us don’t know what ‘gentrification‘means unless we read Reader’s Digest word power thingy. West enders ya know, we can’t afford the dentist……
Webster’s says : : the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gentrification – That’ll work, geez….
Let’s get started on Glengary around the Casino and work in both directions. The City is the biggest landlord around there, to their credit they try and spend more money in shitty 50 year old buildings than we’d like to know. The rest of the place is pretty much a craphole east to Langlois thanks to out of town landlords who thought they’d make easy money off the Casino. That worked out well.. Standards… what little rules there are, nothing happens.
Downtown, sorry Mark, it’s a dump. You guys decided to make money off 19 year old American kids.
The lowest common denominator. It worked well for awhile and now that the business model is old it’s
boo-hoo. Standards… You guy’s have had more than 10 years to figure out a way to get Casino patrons to walk a few blocks west and spend money. I live 4 blocks from downtown, there’s many nice places to eat and have a couple of drinks, just not after 9pm. Standards, pride, that’s what downtown is missing. On my street people look after their places, cut the grass, landscape, clear snow. New people coming in see that and for the most part get it. Maybe that’s why our little working class hood isn’t littered with For Sale signs. Standards…basics…beat up store fronts and worn out signage, graffiti, trash . You guys should be embarrassed. How are taxpayers expected to clean up downtown when y’all ruined it?
Meanwhile, I’ve bought tickets for 2 for Martha Reeves, Chris Rock and Smokey Robinson. Close to $600 that downtown bar owners can wave at as we cross Ouellette. Standards…
From the NY Times…
NYT editorial by Paul Krugman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/opinion/19krugman.html?
_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Stranded in Suburbia
By PAUL KRUGMAN
BERLIN
I have seen the future, and it works.
O.K., I know that these days you’re supposed to see the future in
China or India, not in the heart of “old Europe.”
But we’re living in a world in which oil prices keep setting records,
in which the idea that global oil production will soon peak is
rapidly moving from fringe belief to mainstream assumption. And
Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of
very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon
— have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world.
If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping
with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too
much.
Notice that I said that cars should be fuel-efficient — not that
people should do without cars altogether. In Germany, as in the
United States, the vast majority of families own cars (although
German households are less likely than their U.S. counterparts to be
multiple-car owners).
But the average German car uses about a quarter less gas per mile
than the average American car. By and large, the Germans don’t drive
itsy-bitsy toy cars, but they do drive modest-sized passenger
vehicles rather than S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks.
In the near future I expect we’ll see Americans moving down the same
path. We’ve already done it once: over the course of the 1970s and
1980s, the average mileage of U.S. passenger vehicles rose about 50
percent, as Americans switched to smaller, lighter cars.
This improvement stalled with the rise of S.U.V.’s during the cheap-
gas 1990s. But now that gas costs more than ever before, even after
adjusting for inflation, we can expect to see mileage rise again.
Admittedly, the next few years will be rough for families who bought
big vehicles when gas was cheap, and now find themselves the owners
of white elephants with little trade-in value. But raising fuel
efficiency is something we can and will do.
Can we also drive less? Yes — but getting there will be a lot harder.
There have been many news stories in recent weeks about Americans who
are changing their behavior in response to expensive gasoline —
they’re trying to shop locally, they’re canceling vacations that
involve a lot of driving, and they’re switching to public transit.
But none of it amounts to much. For example, some major public
transit systems are excited about ridership gains of 5 or 10 percent.
But fewer than 5 percent of Americans take public transit to work, so
this surge of riders takes only a relative handful of drivers off the
road.
Any serious reduction in American driving will require more than this
— it will mean changing how and where many of us live.
To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in
a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or
five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit
and plenty of local shopping.
It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a
lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in
America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly
the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of
trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.
And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans
stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a
hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the
better idea.
Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard.
For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s
S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people
will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less
a gallon.
Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular,
faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems
unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to
persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with
the advantage of transit access.
And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class.
Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities,
and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades,
it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of
higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.
Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil,
Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living
like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon,
and for the rest of our lives.
Barry, I don’t really who the “you guys” are that you are referring to. All I know is that ideas take far longer than I would have hope to implement
When I joined the DWBIA 4 years ago $350,000 was spent on marketing and communications, this year it is less than $100,000. The rest has been spent on streetscape, decoration of the streetscape and now development facade grants. Streetscape originally was intended to be complete before Superbowl.
The marketing time and money has been spent on “districting” the downtown in a way that promotes diversification from the bars and nightclubs. Soon you will see a Mosaic Magazine that was a year in the works that explains and will help the public visualize and understand these efforts
The rest of the time has been spent on Community Improvement plans which required a lot of time to create but then put on hold.
Casino patrons rarely leave, convention goers we think will.
There’s a whole bunch of other beautification efforts that have been initiated but are finding years of delays in their implementation. The DWBIA voted to fund $50,000 of new street furniture and garbage cans on Pelissier but the former ED sat on that request for a year and the furniture is sitting in a City Yard right now waiting to be installed.
The flowers will soon be up but the (shoe box) light poles that they were supposed to go on were deemed too weak a few weeks after they were ordered leaving only new streetscape.
What needs to be done now is to finish and decorate streetscape on Ouellette at least to Wyandotte creating what I would deem a minimum critical mass of place. Then create an attractive, pedestrian friendly corridor that leads from the Convention center to Ouellette. That means dealing with the old bus station, goyeau parking garage and adjacent parkette.
The DWBIA obviously needs help with dealing with years of delays.
Mark, when you state the DWBIA needs help in dealig with years of delays, I think you may have that soon with the downtown residents association. Taxpayers need to put pressure on city hall to move forward and quit stalling the processes needed to “get-r-done”.
It amazes me to see how TIF and NEZ areas in the USA have changed “down and out” neighbourhoods into family oriented places, with parks, parkettes, clean and safe housing…just to name a couple just 1 mile away; Corktown (just south of tiger stadium), Woodbridge (just north of Tiger stadium on the other side of the highway) Brush Park (Woodward just north of Comerica park and Ford field), Indian Village (east on Jefferson Ave). The list goes on and this is in DETROIT! A city that is supposed to be worse off than Windsor.
The difference between Detroit and Windsor is that these neighbourhoods are looked at with admiration for older homes. The pioneers of these neihgbourhoods wouldn’t allow their city to continue to turn a blind eye to these places. They put their councillors on the hot seat to “get-r-done”, to find new ideas to gentrify these places and make them new again. Windsor hasn’t had that….yet!
Even looking at downtown Detroit the locals who wanted to live there and those who already did put the mayor and council in the spotlight to show what they weren’t doing, what they were doing and how to make it better and they embraced the community and told their administration what they HAD to do in order for Detroit to turn the corner. This hasn’t happened in Windsor…yet! Our councillors, for the most part (and no not all) give lip service and then walk away as seen by the contested 3:00am closure. These same councillors who voted AGAINST this motion are also the one’s who haven’t been downtown in years (are you following me yet councillor Gignac?) or patron the area frequently enough (and no Ken Lewenza jr. going club-hopping doesn’t equate to understanding the dynamics of a true functioning downtown).
When our councillors embrace the residents and the businesses and listen to what is wanted, only then will gentrification occur and the benefits of it reaped by all.
Only when our councillors and our adminstration understand that we are not trying to make their lives difficult but we too have solutions to the problems (as we live them everyday); that criticism isn’t negative but a positive as we have to know what we are doing wrong in order to correct the issues at hand; that both councillors and adminstration aren’t the be all end all; that EGOS AND AGENDAS have no place in the business of re-building neighbourhoods (and the subsequent ignoring or strategic blocking of people trying to get on committees and boards in the city to make it a better place).
Then and only then will our neighbourhoods and communities flourish. Until then we will have what we have had for almost 30 years; Stagnation and lack of respect for the individual and the bypassing of this city by business leaders locally and internationally.
Which would you choose?
Forget about city council doing the right thing. These are the same idiots who reward incompetence with pay hikes. The only thing our city council knows how to do is throw our money around like a fool at a casino. We’re going to have to take matters into our own hands and act as if we have the power to change the way things work in Windsor. History teaches us that it’s average people like you and me, not the wealthy and powerful who make the greatest impact on history. Don’t believe me? Just look at Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks or Terry Fox. Act as if you have the power to change things and don’t let the losers get you down.
There’s rumblings of an uprising, starting with a citizens revolt at City Hall. George, you’re bang-on! Until the citizens get pissed enough to do something, nothing will change.
I was serious about the citizens revolt. I heard it from two very different sources. Will keep you posted…
Windsor will be looking to Youngstown for inspiration soon…
According to some historians’ theories, cities hit hard by dying industry have a bright future.
“Old towns have taken it on the chin in recent years,” said Joseph Garrera. “But cities are coming back.”
Garrera is the executive director of the Lehigh Valley Historical Museum in Allentown, Pa., one of the largest historical museums in the country, which features relics, articles and timepieces that define the area’s heritage.
Cities like Youngstown and Allentown have been suffering all over the country, but it might not stay that way much longer, Garrera argues.
Garrera and Jill Youngken, the museum’s curator, say modern woes like rising gas prices and soaring real estate costs are driving factors in urban revitalization.
Youngken and Garrera consulted history to predict the future of cities plagued by falling industries. Places like Youngstown and Allentown grew during the industrial age, but that growth shifted to the suburbs about midcentury, they explain. Soon, however, the tides will turn and the culture of America will be making big changes.
“People can’t afford transportation from their suburban homes to their jobs in the city,” Youngken says. “The decreasing price of inner-city life will become more and more attractive in the coming years.”
This renewed appeal in urban life may create a population increase reminiscent of wartime situations, they say. Allentown, however, seems to already be on the right track.
As a midsize city, Allentown is often compared to Youngstown in terms of economy and industry, and the municipal seat of Lehigh County has similarly had its ups and downs since the steel collapse. The death of Bethlehem Steel, a local industry comparable to Youngstown Sheet & Tube, cost thousands of laborers their jobs in the early 1980s. But the problems didn’t start there.
“Things started going downhill shortly after World War II,” Garrera, a New Jersey native, says, as he sits in an office filled with Abraham Lincoln relics. “The industry started slowing down and people said, ‘where did everything go?’ The steel problems of the ‘70s only accelerated things.”
And while both valleys suffered economically and developmentally, Allentown pulled out of it faster and is thriving. According to data from the U.S. Census, the city’s population has been steadily increasing since the early 1980s while Youngstown’s has done just the opposite. Today, Allentown has a population of 100,000 while Youngstown is close to 80,000.
Youngken, whose father had worked for the steel industry, says, “One reason we recovered faster was our location. … We’re close to big places like Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey and Washington D.C., and the influx of people from these places has done nothing but help the city.”
People came to Allentown because of the appeal of the city’s growing suburbs after the fall of city life. Today, she says, developments and condominiums surround the area, with construction lighting up expanding communities.
With Allentown acting as a microcosmic melting pot, the city’s cultural base has become more diverse and creative. Richard Florida’s 2002 Washington Monthly study, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” places Allentown near the top of the creativity index and Youngstown at the bottom.
A Fresh Start
Increasing population alone, however, is not the sole factor in revitalizing Allentown, the museum leaders explain. The city’s creativity and alternative ideas, such as having multiple college campuses adjacent to the city, brought about new leadership, which has been a huge benefit to economic prowess in recent years.
Allentown’s mayor, Ed Pawlowski, has done great things for the city, Youngken and Garrera say. Pawlowski, formerly of Chicago, earned a master’s degree in urban planning and attributes his education to his passion for “recycling the urban core.”
“Allentown could be a great example of revitalization,” Pawlowski says. “New housing downtown, a lot of new commercial and restaurants and working with Pennsylvania Power has helped the city. We are turning major buildings back to productive use.”
“You need destinations.” Pawlowski says. “Retail will follow.”
Members of Pawlowski’s staff also spoke positively.
“We’ve managed to bring the city out of an almost bankrupt state and get back investor confidence,” says Allentown Communications Coordinator Michael Moore. “The mayor has been in office since January 2006, and has since attracted new restaurants and straightened out the city’s finances.”
The mayor and his team’s other accomplishments include raising the city’s credit from triple-‘B’-minus to triple-‘B’-stable, Moore says. This means that investors won’t be as nervous about Allentown’s credit — a major problem in Youngstown.
Pawlowski and his office have also refinanced bonds to the benefit of the area.
Garrera says, “[The mayor] believes the city can do anything.” Talking about the mayor, Garrera often taps shelves and tables with excited hand gestures. “The way things have turned out so far supports that.”
Pawlowski’s use of tax-free zones gives breaks to new establishments and promotes new business. His positive outlook on the future, coupled with a $400 million building-projects fund to make things easier on new small businesses has done extraordinary things for the downtown area, Garrera says.
“His philosophy is if you invest in this city, the city will invest in you.”
Response
Bill Lawson, the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s executive director, is familiar with Youngken and Garrera’s line of thinking, and agrees.
“The cost of fossil fuel transportation will continue to grow,” the historian says. “This country was built around automobiles for the last 50 years, and this type of living will be outdated. People think Youngstown represents these facts.”
Last January, Lawson, 44, was featured in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, “Extreme makeover: City edition,” which brought Youngstown’s problems and future into light. Having seen many of his friends deal with the shock of the steel collapse himself, the Youngstown resident and historian can see where the situation is headed.
“The future is looking good, despite all that’s been happening,” he said. “Other cities like Chicago are following the same trend.”
Youngstown, like Allentown, is close in proximity to major cities. “But unlike Philadelphia and D.C., Cleveland and Pittsburgh are also [depressed] rust belt cities,” Lawson says. “They just don’t have the economic power to influence Youngstown.”
Allentown, he says, had other good things going for it after the steel collapse that Youngstown did not, such as the population pull and other methods of transportation.
What needs to happen
Instead of looking to one industry or one company to rescue a community, Allentown officials argue that residents need to alter their thinking and begin to embrace cities and urban life.
Youngken says, “The hardest thing to change is a person’s attitude. That is the challenge. Every city has a golden mile, or former glory that is ripe to be revitalized.”
Pawlowski says that Youngstown still has enough residents living within its borders to help usher the revitalization.
“We were able to put in a AAA ball field, boost riverfront development, build a $70 million addition to a major hospital … things are happening everywhere,” he said.
Outlook
Lawson also agrees that local people can’t see the good in the future yet, but he thinks it’s an important fact that needs to be addressed.
“[Negativity] is all they know,” he says. “It’s only the second generation since the demise of the steel industry, and people don’t have the ability to break away from that mentality.”
As it stands, Lawson explains, Youngstown isn’t as bad off as some other places, such as east of the Mississippi River, St. Louis or Camden, N.J.
“We may be lost or dead in some areas,” he says. “But it will change.”
George, while I agree that it is the responsibility of the citizens to tell their councillors what they want, namecalling councillors will only serve to entrench them in their positions.
Mahatma Ghandi once said “You must become the change you want to see in the world”. I think that is the best principle. As far as a citizen’s revolution — it’s about time! Part of the reason that the environment of malaise continues is because it *isn’t* just city council, but the entire populace who has slipped into, as I once heard it called, the Malaise of Moderninity.
Step away from the idiot box — it will not save you!
Thanks for posting the article Chris.
These things jumped out at me right away:
Allentown’s mayor, Ed Pawlowski, has done great things for the city, Youngken and Garrera say. Pawlowski, formerly of Chicago, earned a master’s degree in urban planning and attributes his education to his passion for “recycling the urban core.”
While Allentown’s mayor has urban planning as a background Windsor has a lawyer. While Allentown’s mayor plans and builds our plans and sues..go figure!
We are turning major buildings back to productive use.”
Windsor instead destroys their legacy. Why do we want to look like every other city out there? How does that attract new residents and tourists? People want to live somewhere unique and different regardless if they live in sub-urbia or not.
Pawlowski’s use of tax-free zones gives breaks to new establishments and promotes new business. His positive outlook on the future, coupled with a $400 million building-projects fund to make things easier on new small businesses has done extraordinary things for the downtown area, Garrera says.
“His philosophy is if you invest in this city, the city will invest in you.”
Where is our help? Yes the DWBIA has facade grants but has anyone looked at our convaluted tax system created for the city center west lands? Even our planning department stated they were difficult to comprehend. The last I have seen our taxes went up and our small business tax is atrocious!
One can only hope that our elected officials get the picture and put pressure on a mayor that is spinning his wheels while living off the smaller successes of Detroit.
“[Negativity] is all they know,” he says. “It’s only the second generation since the demise of the steel industry, and people don’t have the ability to break away from that mentality.”
Only the second generation! Does that mean Windsor which is just beginning the demise of the auto industry has forty years to go before things start to turn around!
i have my doubts that gentrification will happen in Windsor, the way it is now happening in other cities or the way we are expecting it to happen. A lot of things need to happen before we can think of gentrification in this city. We need people who are working and far from retirement to buy the homes of the retirees in this city, so they, the gentrified can sell their homes and buy condos etc., in the inner city. Then we need developers with vision to build those gentrified type housings. We need our young people to stay here and work and raise their families but with every graduating diploma handed out at the university and college, there is a ticket rolled up in it to somewhere else and it is not Windsor. With the housing market heading for the Antarctic, and developers sitting idle or looking elsewhere, banks tightening up credit, and an over supply of housing just being boarded up, the talk of gentrification is just that, talk!
It is far to early in this city to see the total outcome of the gutting of this city. Yes plans can be made, dreams can be written down and wishes might come true. Right now, this city and us are in for the fight of our lives to keep this city viable! We aren’t in transition, the one hundred year core idea of this city has disappeared! And sadly the one hundred year mind set of this community from the mayor on down, from our illustrious union leaders to the grunts on the line is known nationally and internationally, we will almost need two generations to change the thinking in this city and the worldwide perception of this city. There is no magic bullet, no wonder drug!
The two articles about Windsor in the Toronto Star on the weekend, did us no favours here! But they did report accurately the situation in Windsor and the dysfunction of the mayor and city council.
No, I have my doubts that this city will gentrify the way we are hoping, it will with seniors and retirees staying in their homes they can not sell.
I made a mistake when I called everyone on city council a bunch of idiots. What I should have said is that our mayor and council are not acting in the city’s or the citizen’s best interests when they give out hefty pay hikes to unelected department heads two days after GM announces it’s leaving. I know there’s a lot of gloating in Toronto over Windsor’s misfortune, but I would caution Torontonians that Windsor is the canary in the mineshaft. The hard times that manufacturing cities like Windsor and Hamilton are experiencing are going to hit Toronto sooner or later. How long do the movers and shakers in Hogtown think the Canadian real-estate bubble will last now that the American economy is headed into a free fall? Once the real estate bubble bursts, Toronto will be in a worse economic predicament than Windsor.
I have a beef with the membership of Local 444. After reading Kenny Lewenza’s highly inappropriate comments in The Toronto Star, telling reporter Tony Van Alphen that Windsor is one plant closure away from being another Flint, why haven’t any of his members publicly pointed out that it’s irresponsible comments like Kenny’s that give Windsor a bad name with potential investors? If Kenny can’t say anything nice about the city he ought to keep quiet.