The map remains the same, but Toronto and Hamilton have changed places. Until recently, Steeltown was a self-hating city dismissed by the rest of the world for its coarse ways, unwashed residents and knuckle-dragging politicians.

Today, as Hamilton rises from the ashes of its grimy industrial past, Toronto is consumed by flames of its own setting. While Hogtowners cheer on the thug they chose to be their mayor, both the city and its chief magistrate have become the punchline of jokes heard around the globe.

While Hamilton’s transportation director, Don Hull, publicly calls for regional transit; Toronto’s parochial planners squander billions on a subway the city feels it “deserves.”

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“The big issue for me right now is keeping the momentum going,” says Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina. “We’re in a tenuous situation. We’ve attracted the attention of developers who normally dismiss Hamilton as that stinky city down the way. We are creating jobs and we are attracting people. But it behooves us to see the big picture.”

That’s something Toronto lost sight of long ago. In this city, the big picture is something you hang on a wall.

Bratina, elected mayor in 2010, makes no secret of his desire for a re-urbanized city. He supports public transit, cycling, the arts and Hamilton’s long neglected downtown. Indeed, he waxes wistfully about growing up that city’s East End and how his father rode to work at Dofasco on a bike.

In 2005, when Bratina moved back into the then grungy downtown neighbourhood of Corktown, it was known locally as Cracktown. Friends thought he was mad. Now it’s a neighbourhood many can’t afford.

“Downtown is the face of the city,” Bratina argues. “If you don’t have a viable downtown, you don’t have a city.”

Though undoing Hamilton’s painfully suburban recent history won’t be easy, the mayor seems determined to shift the civic culture to something more mature and sustainable than endless developer-driven sprawl.

“When I was a kid growing up here, Hamilton was a magic city,” Bratina recalls. “We lost that, but now it’s coming back. The older housing stock wasn’t cherished, but now young people cherish being part of the urban fabric. Hamilton’s loss of self-esteem started in the mid-1970s. A large number of manufacturing jobs were lost in the ’80s. It tore the guts out of Hamilton.”

But, as Bratina notes, “your disadvantages become advantages.” A downtown core abandoned to the poor avoided the renewal pressures that destroyed so many North American cities. Neighbourhoods ignored for decades, their housing stock left intact, are now undergoing a resurgence.

Petra Matar, a 25-year-old intern at David Premi Architects, is one reason why. Born in Nigeria, raised in Lebanon and educated in Dubai, she moved to Hamilton in 2011.

“When I moved here, I lived on the Escarpment,” she explains. “It’s very suburban, very sprawly. I thought I’d get a job in Toronto. Then I had to go downtown Hamilton to deal with immigration matters. I had been told it was dirty, dangerous and crime-ridden. But I discovered it is really an interesting place to be: to live, work and make friends. Hamilton isn’t a big city, but it’s not a small city either.

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“Now I am definitely committed to Hamilton. It has the perfect scale for a city. It’s walkable if you live downtown. I can get to work in 10 minutes.”

But, she adds, “politics in Hamilton are way behind the times. They have nothing to do with my generation. Decision-making should be much more dispersed.”

Though the mayor might not agree entirely with Matar; they both want the same thing.

“We’re now,” Bratina insists, “at the tipping point of a new city — one we all knew could exist.”

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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