Toronto Mayor David Miller might be the only prominent figure in history to leave a high-powered job claiming he wants to spend more time with his family – and actually mean it. Explaining his decision not to run for a third term as mayor, Mr. Miller discussed in detail the moments of his kids' lives he had missed during his six years at the reins of Canada's largest city, and he said his first post-mayoral gig will be to serve as assistant coach to his 14-year-old daughter's soccer team.
The public might have been forgiven for initially assuming that “I need more time with my family” was code for “I am tired of trying to run a 21st-century city in a 19th-century system.”
Like many societies around the world, Canada has urbanized at a tremendous rate over the past century. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of the Canadian population living in urban regions was 80 per cent in 2006 – a dramatic shift from the start of the 20th century, when just 37 per cent of us lived in urban regions. Moreover, the demographics of our cities have changed radically: Once dominated by people of European heritage, they are now populated by immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from everywhere on the planet, including increasing numbers of aboriginal peoples.
Many of our systems – political, economic, infrastructural – have had a hard time keeping pace with this massive demographic shift. Mr. Miller was handling not only the ordinary managerial issues that face any municipal leader (a city workers strike over the summer was one recent hurdle), but also the broader systemic challenge of leading a fast-growing city with one of the most diverse populations on Earth, while wielding very little power to generate revenue or fund advances in areas such as planning, transit and infrastructure. Citizens watch in dismay as their mayors implore senior governments for a share of their own tax dollars, like children begging for candy, and wonder who is to blame in this perennial charade.
A recent survey of Canadian public attitudes suggests that people living in Canada's larger cities are less satisfied with their local quality of life than people living in smaller towns – a finding that may indicate that this country's urbanites are feeling the lag between what their cities need in order to thrive and what existing systems are able to provide.
In August, 2009, Community Foundations of Canada commissioned Environics to survey Canadians about the quality of life they experience in their communities across the country. The survey found that Canadians are generally very pleased with the quality of life they enjoy locally. Nearly nine in 10 describe the quality of life where they live as at least good and more than a third (36 per cent) describe it as excellent.
But there is a notable variation by community size in the quality of life Canadians report. Among those in communities of fewer than 5,000 residents, 43 per cent rate local quality of life as excellent, as compared with 32 per cent of those in cities of 100,000 people or more.
Life in smaller towns isn't perfect: Canadians in smaller centres report a greater sense of urgency about revitalizing their local economies and obtaining better health care close to home. But, over all, residents of smaller towns are not only more satisfied today, they also have more confidence that their local leaders are capable of making the changes necessary to improve life in their communities over time.
