For a city that prides itself on being home to the world, Toronto remains surprisingly reluctant to venture beyond its own boundaries.

There was a time back in the early 21st century when Hogtown wanted to break out of its clinging colonial past and become a progressive player on the international stage. We wanted to act like what we had become — a big city, a powerful city, a global city. We wanted to join with other cities to talk, exchange ideas and tackle the big issues of our times, whether climate change or the world economy.

Now it’s news when we send an official delegation to Los Angeles to sell off the Port Lands to movie studios or Austin, Texas, to see how to organize a music festival. And as often as not, the result is likely to be a fiasco like the one faced by Scarborough’s singularly unimpressive Councillor Michael Thompson after he stayed in a $900-a-night Hollywood hotel. The chair of the city’s Economic Development Committee was there to “strengthen existing relationships with Toronto’s key investment partners in film, television and digital media production and to secure future investment.” There was no word on whether Thompson had his autograph album with him.

By contrast, in 2008 then-mayor David Miller chaired the C40, the organization that “connects more than 90 of the world’s greatest cities.” Subsequent chief magistrates have focused more on double parking on Bloor St. and red-light cameras than on participating in an international network devoted to enlightened urbanism.

Long gone are the days when an extroverted Toronto went after world fairs, the Olympics and the like. Indeed, Canada was a no-show at the last Expo, held in Milan in 2015. The rationale was that nobody cares about such events anymore. Still, it drew 22 million visitors, changed the skyline of the host city, boosted Milan's economy and transformed it into a major tourist destination.

“Toronto hides itself under a barrel,” says Richard Joy, president of the Toronto office of the Urban Land Institute. “I find it remarkable how underappreciated Toronto is across Canada and around the world. We don’t promote ourselves as we should. We’re lagging so far behind where we should be.”

Obviously, civic issues are necessarily parochial, but we live in the first truly global age. More than ever, we are all connected and most of us live in cities. Though it may seem counterintuitive, in such times urban issues matter more than ever. The recent G7 shindig, held in an armed camp far from the madding crowd, was a reminder of how the priorities of the nation state are increasingly disconnected from real life. It’s cities that must deal with reality. Hence the pressure to balance the strictly local with the need to create international networks.

The new preoccupation with urbanism has led to a realization that solutions are possible without nations but not without cities. The example of Toronto’s multiculturalism makes it clear that cities can join what nations, ethnicities and religions divide. There’s a growing awareness that what makes Toronto successful is that it’s a work in progress, more process than place. Crucially, it’s a project in which residents are engaged.

Toronto may not be beautiful — its architecture is ordinary, its planning inadequate, leadership is weak and its council dominated by car-dependent suburbanites — yet it thrives. Though surrounded by sprawl in every direction, Torontonians manage to live out their commitment to urbanity. They have more in common with big cities in other countries than communities 50 kilometres along the 401. The growing gap between urban and suburban was confirmed by the results of last week’s provincial election; while the NDP swept “old” Toronto, Doug Ford rode the 905 to power.

At its heart, the suburban ethos comes from a longing for the comfort, security and sameness of the subdivision. Toronto, by contrast, has embraced diversity in all its messiness, unpredictability and inconvenience. When the FIFA World Cup kicks off Thursday, soccer fans won’t have to travel more than a couple of blocks to gloat.

Torontonians, mostly immigrants, carry on regardless. Their strength is the city’s strength, all the more because Toronto’s success is a bottom up phenomenon. The people, light years ahead of most “leaders,” have brought the world with them and remade the city in its various images. They are part of an unprecedented urban project that has changed Toronto as much as it has them.

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