The Value of Investing in Canadian Downtowns - International ...

STRATEGY
Is the City Strategically Investing in Its Future?
Approach to Municipal Investments
The City of Toronto has been moving forward on many capital projects in the downtown, yet the value of these
projects can be difficult to quantify as over 90% of the City’s proposed Capital Budget is assigned to citywide
projects. Overwhelmingly these ‘citywide projects’ relate to broad investments such as technology upgrades, fleet
upgrades, waste system improvements, sewers and investment in utilities. Yet some citywide investments do relate
to the downtown study area, for example the ‘Waterfront Revitalization Initiative’ has been a key focus of City
investment, as well as the Pan Am Games Athletes’ Village.
The remainder of the proposed budget (around 10%) is classified by ward, allowing downtown investments to be
viewed separately. In this context, the downtown fares well with relatively high levels of proposed investment in 2010
to 2012 compared to other parts of the City. Yet it should be noted that over 60% of this proposed investment is to be
spent on Union Station, which will benefit the entire Toronto region. Other key investments downtown include the
Regent Park redevelopment and the Nathan Phillips Square upgrade.
$300,000
$250,000
$200,000
$150,000
$100,000
$50,000
$-
Proposed Capital Investment in City of Toronto by Wards 2010-2012
Etobicoke (Wards 1-6) York (Wards 7-12) Inner North, East and Downtown (Wards 20,
West (Wards 13-19, 21- 27, 28)
26, 29-34)
Scarborough (Wards
35-44)
2010
2011
2012
Data Collection Process
From the outset it is important to acknowledge that the project team faced significant challenges in the compilation of
a complete set of Capital Projects Data for the City of Toronto. Therefore, the team utilized a methodology to present
capital projects data that differs from the other case studies. To develop the capital projects map the team utilized
building permit data for the past 10 years from the City’s Open Data site (toronto.ca/open). The team then sorted
downtown investments by postal code and identified the value of building permits issued for traditional public sector
investments such as libraries, arenas, performing arts centres, sports complexes and facilities, as the basis of capital
expenditure. This list of building permits included construction values and addresses but it did not include the name
of the facility that received improvement, so the team searched through the addresses on Google Earth to identify
name of the name of the facility where the investment was made (in a handful of instances this could not be
determined). Additionally there are several investments located on the boundary of the downtown; these have been
included as this has been the approach applied across the other case studies.
This data has some limitations as it fails to capture investments being made that do not trigger building permits such
as social programs, small-scale public realm upgrades and/or undertaking a detailed planning process. Moreover,
this approach fails to account for the municipal proportion of investment; rather it captures the total value of the
capital investment. However given the data limitations faced, this approach is considered optimal for gaining a
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