“Let's build the new Toronto together, a Toronto of equality, a Toronto of safety, a Toronto of prosperity and a Toronto of hope,” Mel Lastman, mayor of the freshly amalgamated megacity, urged his new constituents.

“Let Jan. 2, 1998, be the day that we begin to make a great city even greater: A city that works — for everyone!”

Almost 17 years later, the result of the forced marriage of six municipalities is a boom town for some and a strangled dream for others.

The envy of North America for its vibrancy and vertical growth, Toronto is also a perpetual conflict of interests, criss-crossed by more dividing lines than the ice at the end of a Leafs game.

Urban-suburban. Left-right. White-diverse. Subway-LRT. Car-bike. Tenant-owner. North and south of Highway 401. Transit haves and have-nots. Anti-tax and pro-tax. Rich-poor, with a vanishing middle.

The political war was apparent after October’s election, with most of Etobicoke and almost all of Scarborough demanding “Ford more years” — an option forcefully rejected by the city’s middle, especially downtown.

Today, as John Tory prepares to become the fourth mayor of the melded metropolis, the Star launches Divided City — an in-depth, ongoing exploration of the barriers and rifts that separate the almost 2.8 million Torontonians. We will offer solutions to knock down or overcome those divides, to make Toronto more of a unified whole. We will also get granular, with sophisticated looks at what’s happening in some of the city’s many neighbourhoods.

And we will probe Toronto’s relationship to the 905 belt, where rapidly growing “outer suburbs” including Mississauga and Brampton are talking more about walkability and mass transit than tract housing and highways.

“We remain a divided city,” says Myer Siemiatycki, a Ryerson University political scientist who has watched Toronto develop from the unpopular merger of urban and suburban ordered by then-premier Mike Harris.

“We have not become a single community, and remain divided along different lines, some inherited from the days well before amalgamation.”

Samyukta Shekhar, a 25-year-old physiotherapist, stands at Ellesmere and Morrish Rds., in her neighbourhood on Scarborough’s east edge.

“It’s different from downtown Toronto. This area is more cut off,” she says, adding that the cluster of middle-class single-family homes is “quiet and safe.”

But when this Torontonian needed art supplies, she found them in nearby Markham, saving her a three-hour TTC trip downtown and back.

And what does Shekhar think of Etobicoke, her neighbourhood’s west-end equivalent? She doesn’t. “That’s too far for me. Markham is really close.”

Roger Keil, a York University expert on suburbs, says those 905-belt communities are becoming “glamour zones,” with culture and opportunities akin to those in downtown Toronto.

“So you’re going to make connections between one glamour zone of the city and another glamour zone, and we don’t have any municipal instruments to make life any better in the in-between city, places like Scarborough and North York, and that’s a real problem,” Keil says.

Keil believes that, under the influences of globalization and neo-liberalism, Toronto’s leaders have broken the “social contract, in which it is a human right not to be poor in this city,” which for a long time had involved explicit policies to bridge the divides.

City government can start to repair that contract, and meaningfully empower non-governmental groups to help rather than just be feel-good benefactors, Keil says. “But I don’t know if (John) Tory has that in his heart.”

One of the biggest, and growing, divides is income. University of Toronto professor David Hulchanski’s “Three Cities” research revealed that, until the 1990s, we were building a mostly middle-income society.

Since then, Toronto has increasingly polarized into a city of relatively rich downtowners, living along transit lines, surrounded by low-income residents of the “inner suburbs” with less access to transit and services.

“First and foremost, the divided city is about the socio-economic status of who lives where,” Hulchanski says. “When we ask ourselves, ‘Why do some people live in some areas and not others?’ — money buys choice.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Related divisions include that of renters versus owners, zoning that often discourages density outside the core, and skin colour and discrimination; Toronto’s core is increasingly white, the ’burbs more diverse.

Growing inequity in Toronto and other Canadian cities has followed redistribution — regulations and programs that were deliberately changed to benefit some parts of society and not others, he says.

“It was decisions, year by year. The good news is that decisions year by year can turn that around.”

Siemiatycki, at Ryerson, says it’s striking that the political divide stands tall long after Etobicoke, York, East York, North York, Scarborough and Toronto were “hitched and stitched together.”

“We know there are disconnects, divisions and polarizations,” he says. “Let’s be experimental and open to piloting and trying different approaches to overcoming the divisions that exist, and especially to creating more of a sense in all parts and pieces of this city that residents are being heard.”

In an interview, Tory warned that ignoring the divides, and letting parts of the city become increasingly alienated, threatens Toronto’s long-term success.

“I see that as one of the biggest challenges facing me and the city …,” he says. “If people haven’t bought in because they don’t think they have any reason to buy in, maybe they don’t have any hope.”

Before amalgamation, Anne Golden headed a task force that recommended abolishing municipal councils in favour of a single GTA government in charge of such things as economic development and transit planning, while retaining agencies that serve local needs and priorities.

“I stand by that model — we would have a much stronger regional consciousness,” says Golden, a renowned thinker in the areas of public policy and administration.

Toronto can make certain changes, but some fixes — such as tax redistribution — rest with senior governments. After Mayor Rob Ford’s chaotic tenure, she adds, Torontonians probably have little appetite for structural upheaval.

A good start would be a Toronto mayor who is seen to be at least trying to pull the city together, rather than pit parts of it against others, she says.

“Pride and optimism can overcome, to a major extent, a sense of division — and I’m hopeful that’s what Mr. Tory can achieve.”

MORE

How big is your Toronto?

Map: 40 years of growing income inequality in Toronto