The worst of times are usually obvious, as in the case of Toronto under Rob Ford. The best of times can take longer to reveal themselves — as in the case of Toronto under Rob Ford, which is most likely to be remembered by future historians not for its political buffoonery but for the amazing building boom that has launched our city into the new century leagues ahead of its closest competitors.

To get a sense of just how far ahead, consider some of the usual suspects: Chicago, Boston, Manhattan, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, which collectively gained 34,330 new residential housing units between 2009 and 2012, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Over the same period, according to city statistics, Toronto alone gained 56,444 new units — 20,000 more than the U.S seven put together. You have to add Seattle, Minneapolis and Philadelphia to the U.S. side of the balance before it tips. In broad terms, Toronto is building 10 times as much new housing as any comparable U.S. city.

This is more than remarkable, it is outstanding — both with respect to other cities and our own history. Many U.S. cities remain caught in the trap that enclosed Toronto a generation ago, with new residential construction at a standstill, rents soaring and growing pressure on government to provide the housing that private capital once did. But what was once an urgent issue and major government expense for us — affordable housing — is today little more than the stage for a minor sideshow in the ongoing Rob Ford farce.

The reason affordable housing is rarely mentioned in Toronto today is that we are creating so much of it. Condos selling at $500 a square foot may not be affordable in themselves, but they have a tangible effect on the housing market as a whole — an economic blessing contemporary Toronto proves in spades. It is no coincidence that the average monthly rent on an apartment in Toronto — $1,612, according to rentjungle.com — is lower than it is in all but one of the increasingly housing-starved U.S. cities cited above.

The trend lines are equally revealing. Rents in the most attractive U.S. cities are spiking as the economy recovers and building stays stalled. Rents in Toronto remain comparatively flat and look likely to fall as our miraculously bountiful supply of new housing skates ahead of demand and long-prophesied “peak condo” looms.

This is not to suggest that there is no longer any need for government to subsidize housing for the poor, but the condo boom has clearly relieved pressure for greater spending while helping to target aid more closely on the truly needy. And the broader economic benefits of so much new housing in the urban core are impossible to overstate. Jobs follow people, leading more people to follow jobs, which in turn leads more jobs to follow the more people in a virtuous circle of growth and prosperity.

There’s always room for more in the open city — more people, more jobs, more growth.

Gentrification is a dirty word south of the border because it inevitably means that long-established low-income residents in an up-and-coming neighbourhood must make way for high-income newcomers. But constant construction makes room for everybody in Toronto. Newcomers pour in, but nobody is forced out. Here, gentrification is a goal shared by all.

U.S. cities that fail to add housing despite strong demand risk becoming “luxury goods,” according to Harvard economist and leading urban theorist Ed Glaeser. Using heavy regulation to choke development, he says, they have chosen to grow not in buildings and population, but in price.

“A healthy city is one that has a healthy mix of demographic groups,” Glaeser told the New York Times in one of his many calls for what amounts to Toronto-style up-zoning. “Shutting out your 25-to-40 year-olds? That feels like a bad strategy for urban innovation.”

Almost inadvertently, freewheeling Toronto has tackled and solved the most difficult problem of emergent 21st century urbanism.

We have heard forever that it won’t last, which is undoubtedly true, but the cranes are still swinging and the main reason new starts have declined recently is that no fewer than 45,000 units — an astounding amount — are currently under construction.

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And so what if the market “corrects” itself? That will just make housing in Toronto even more affordable, and the virtuous circle will continue to spin.