The Next Big Idea 10 concepts that could - University of Toronto ...

Leading Edge
The Big Idea
How Cities Compare Urban
centres have a huge impact on their
residents’ well-being. So how can
we make them better
The year 2009 marked a watershed moment: for the first time in
history, half the world’s population lived in cities. But while
global urbanization is often associated with vast mega-cities
such as Tokyo, Cairo and São Paolo, a majority of the world’s
city-dwellers actually live in compact metropolitan areas with
fewer than 500,000 residents.
In developed nations, many cities now function as economic
hothouses, bringing together high concentrations of
expertise, capital and entrepreneurs. A World Bank study in
2006 noted that different-sized cities often specialize – in pharmaceuticals
or post-secondary education, for example – or act
as a transportation hub or financial centre. At the same time,
growing urbanization in developing nations is exacerbating
problems of poverty, congestion and pollution. Even wealthy
cities increasingly suffer from a widening gap between the very
rich and the very poor. The upshot is that local governments
will become ever more crucial players in global affairs, perhaps
even eclipsing their regional or national counterparts.
With this ongoing shift, says Patricia McCarney, a development
expert at the Munk School of Global Affairs, city officials
worldwide are anxious to learn how their counterparts elsewhere
deliver vital local services, from water treatment to transit,
policing and garbage collection. By exchanging knowledge
about best practices, she says, cities can improve their quality
of life and attractiveness to international investors.
It was this sort of thinking that led to the creation of the
Global City Indicators Facility, a database of comparable statistics
that allow cities to track their effectiveness on everything
from planning and economic growth to transportation, safety
and education. The project has the backing of the World Bank,
whose officials have pushed for more reliable data to support
its lending in heavily urbanized regions, such as Latin America.
Two years after the launch of the Global City facility,
McCarney’s team tracks more than 100 indicators and has
signed up 125 cities of all sizes and from every part of the world,
from Dallas to Kabul. McCarney – who travels extensively to
promote the project – is aiming to reach the 1,000-city mark in
time for Milan’s 2015 Expo on sustainable development.
The project has posed all sorts of methodological challenges,
not least of which is settling on a precise definition of
the term “city.” Metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations,
especially those experiencing high growth, tend to spill over
political boundaries. McCarney says her group chose to focus
solely on municipal statistics that correspond to existing
municipal boundaries. For large cities, they have formulated a
way of aggregating data across a region to build indicators that
apply to sprawling urban areas, such as Greater Toronto.
Each year, Global City publishes a statistical compendium,
which is distributed to the members, as well as to the project’s
funders. “Good, comparable data on cities didn’t exist until
now,” says McCarney, patting the latest volume with a satisfied
grin. “This is a first.”
The index is a boon to international development agencies,
urban researchers and businesses looking to set up new facilities.
McCarney notes that some municipalities also use the data
to counter much-hyped but less rigorous city rankings, which
may provide misleading snapshots about what some cities have
to offer. But she observes her index’s most meaningful benefit
is that it provides members with a forum to exchange ideas on
how cities can function. “The exciting part is that the cities
themselves have started to build a network,” she says, “and
Toronto is now at the hub.” – John Lorinc
illustration: nick higgins
Lingo
Sexsomnia
People talk in their sleep and walk in their
sleep – but have sex in their sleep Some
do, according to Dr. Colin Shapiro. A study
conducted at the Sleep Research Laboratory
at the University Health Network’s Toronto
Western Hospital, where Shapiro is head of
neuropsychiatry, found that as many as one
in 12 patients reported engaging in sexual
activity while sleeping. The research found
that the phenomenon was about three times
more common in men as women. The term
“sexsomnia” falls under the category of sleep
disturbances known as parasomnias.
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