If you imagine the fight over amalgamation was over long ago, think again. It's being replayed, on a lesser scale, in the middle of this election.
As if there weren't enough issues on the plate - from transit to taxes to waste at city hall - various candidates for mayor have been talking about a form of "de-amalgamation" that would take power away from city hall and pass it down to local communities.
All three remaining candidates - Rob Ford, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone - want to give more power to community councils. Rocco Rossi, who pulled out this week, proposed creating four deputy mayors to represent the city's districts. Mr. Smitherman has spoken out against a recently passed harmonized all-city zoning bylaw. He calls it an example of how the amalgamated city's "one-size-fits-all" approach alienates local residents.
It's all a bit much. Debating amalgamation in 2010 is like debating Confederation in 1900. The world has moved on. It has been a dozen years since the provincial government combined the municipalities of Scarborough, Etobicoke, York, East York, North York and Toronto into one big city. Downtown progressives called it a wicked plot by Conservative Premier Mike Harris, but the Armageddon they predicted over the creation of the "megacity" never arrived.
Merging the six municipalities was, well, common sense. Instead of six fire departments and fire chiefs, Toronto now has one. Instead of six planning departments and six property-tax systems, it has one. With about 2.6 million people, the amalgamated Toronto is the country's sixth biggest government, with the clout to argue with higher orders for things like transit funding.
Amalgamation, granted, was a massive project, and not everything has gone perfectly. North Etobicoke councillor Rob Ford owes his rise partly to the fact that many people in the suburbs feel that city hall does not truly represent them. But the answer to suburban alienation is not to turn back the clock.
Toronto needs a strong central government to represent all of its residents. Devolving power to the communities sounds sensible - who could be against letting local people deal with local issues? - but it could lead to a balkanized, every-neighbourhood-for-itself Toronto.
If community councils get more power, would they be able to, say, block a new apartment tower that local residents oppose but that fits with the city's goal of encouraging more urban density? Could they block a bike lane that local merchants dislike because it takes out roadside parking spots, even if that lane helped people from other districts commute to their jobs without the expense of a car?
It is not hard to imagine a Toronto with different levels of service in different neighbourhoods, leading to increasing inequality and eroding our already shallow sense of cohesion. It is not hard to imagine a Toronto where prosperous neighbourhoods with civically engaged residents have more pull than neighbourhoods full of immigrants who don't know how to work the system.
City hall doesn't always ignore local communities. It was under an amalgamated Toronto, don't forget, that the city decided to spend millions on helping troubled neighbourhoods in the inner suburbs. As budget chief Shelley Carroll points out, the city is spending millions more reconfiguring the Six Points traffic interchange in Etobicoke to allow better development in the area - hardly an example of downtown hegemony. All Torontonians will pay for the project through the budget of the unified city.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that mayoral candidates are pushing decentralization simply to pander to local communities: Vote for me and you'll get more power. But who will speak for Toronto?
Marcus Gee