Greater Toronto’s economic growth rate will surpass that of every urban region in the country this year, except for booming Calgary, says the Conference Board of Canada.

But to maintain its momentum, the region has to maintain itself as an attractive place to live, conference board chief economist Glen Hodgson told the Greater Toronto summit.

And in some ways “I’m amazed at how underinvested Toronto has been” in maintaining itself as a livable city, he told the summit of community leaders.

Hodgson said the economy of Greater Toronto, including Oshawa and Hamilton, grew 4 per cent in 2010, and will grow another 3 per cent in 2011. That’s faster than the national average of about 2 per cent for 2011.

The GTA’s growth, of course, comes after a severe setback: Its economy shrank 2.5 per cent in 2009.

That was driven by a 15 per cent drop in the region’s manufacturing output, Hodgson said. Manufacturing has since bounced back – it should grow by about 3 per cent in each of the next two years.

But it is being outpaced by the service sector, which continued to grow right through the recession, he said.

While jobs and incomes have recovered, Hodgson said in relative terms the Toronto region has declined over the past 25 years.

In 1987, he said, the Toronto region’s income per person was about 25 per cent higher than the Canadian average. As more higher-paying jobs move west, per capita incomes in the Toronto area now are only about 5 per cent above the national average.

John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region District Labour Council, told the summit that the rich and poor in the region are also moving farther apart.

“The real dilemma is whether the prosperity is shared,” he said. “There’s a lot more people working at poverty wages, and many of them are newcomers.”

“In the past couple of decades, immigrants – particularly people of colour – are not reaching that middle class place you could get as an immigrant 30 or 40 years ago when my parents came.”

In an interview, Hodgson said that keeping the city attractive will be a key to its prosperity.

“If a city is vibrant and attractive to people, then the capital will come and the jobs will come to the people,” he said.

“If people don’t want to live in the place, it doesn’t matter how many jobs you create by opening a new plant or a new operation, you won’t be able to fill the jobs.”

Good public services are vital, he said:

“It’s having top quality health care systems, it’s building infrastructure so people don’t get frustrated sitting on the DVP in the morning.”

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“I don’t live here, but I’m amazed at how underinvested Toronto has been,” said Hodgson, who is from Ottawa.

Toronto, he said, has two main subway lines, plus the Sheppard stump; Madrid, by contrast, has 20.

“Make it attractive to people, and then head offices will want to be there, because head office employees want to live in an attractive place – a place where you can get to the waterfront, a place with park space, but also a place where you can get out of town on the weekend.”