# Toronto or vancouver?which city is more powerful?is toronto becoming #2



## donald (Apr 18, 2011)

Is vancouver becoming internationaly more dominate than toronto?More high net worth people now in vancouver?olympics?more cutting edge?international business more in vancouver?just curious what city you think?or is toronto always going to be #1....kind of like toronto is like new york and vancouver is like los angelos in the states....Different,west coast,east coast.


----------



## dubmac (Jan 9, 2011)

hard to say which is more dominant. 
Certainly Vancouver has benefited due to it's location wrt China, international trade with Asia - yet it maintains its proximity to the US via Seattle. It really is an international city - much different from Toronto. But at the same time..we still haven't paid for the Olympics yet - and I expect we will continue to pay. Taxes out here are high. So is the cost of food. It's an amazing place to live - but also expensive. More expensive than Toronto.


----------



## Mark Rose (Jun 14, 2011)

Going forward, I suspect Vancouver will be a lot more prosperous. The city and provincial finances are in better shape, there's the trade advantage with China, etc.

Toronto will be facing troubles. There's major financial turmoil out there and it will likely affect Bay St. Plus, much of the Ontario economy is tied to the US, much more so than BC. Toronto is deep in debt, has a large deficit, and the province has been run by a profligate spender for the last eight years, and his replacement doesn't look much better.

I'd avoid the property market in both cities.

Toronto will still be more important as there are 7 or so million people in the GTA versus the what, 2 million in the Lower Mainland? But the prosperity out west will rise faster than in Toronto in the intermediate term.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

All Vancouver has is expensive land. Toronto has everything else. Toronto has a more diverse economy than most realize. It's not just banks and cars. And at any rate, Ontario has been beating the pants off BC in terms of productivity growth and capital accumulation. There was a report on this topic from CD Howe a few days ago.

Calgary has already eclipsed Vancouver.


----------



## steve41 (Apr 18, 2009)

andrewf said:


> All Vancouver has is expensive land. Toronto has everything else. Toronto has a more diverse economy than most realize. It's not just banks and cars. And at any rate, Ontario has been beating the pants off BC in terms of productivity growth and capital accumulation. There was a report on this topic from CD Howe a few days ago.
> 
> Calgary has already eclipsed Vancouver.


 You forgot about the incessant rain and that we're due for a massive earthquake/tsunami which will completely wipe Vancouver off the map, and that Vancouverites can't see the Rockies, never won a Stanley Cup.....


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

What if in the future people discover the joys of telecommuting instead of living in a sardine can? GTA would become a wasteland


----------



## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

I live in Vancouver and both my sons work in the GTA. The opportunity in the GTA is greater. More population. Big banks and insurance companies. Corporate headquarters.

Teams in the NBA, Baseball, NHL.

Proximity to markets in the east. Even California is a shadow of its former self.

Take away commodites and utilities from BC and Alberta and what is left?


----------



## steve41 (Apr 18, 2009)

OOPS... I almost forgot.... all the primo retirement communities in the Okanogan, Parksville, Comox.... are over-run with retirees escaping from AB.


----------



## steve41 (Apr 18, 2009)

I just read an article on Nauru, one of the smallest island nations. At one point they were also the 2nd richest per capita. They mined phosphate...


> Not long ago, Nauru was one of the wealthiest nations on Earth: The phosphate mines, before they dried up, gave the nation the second-highest per-capita GDP in the world. But today, 90% of its residents are unemployed and the nation's economy sags under enormous debt. The phosphate mineral money that brought Ferraris to the island in the 1970s and '80s has dried up, leaving all those sports cars to rust. Today, most Nauruans live on about 90 to 100 Australian dollars a week.


 Beware the reliance on a single, non-renewable resource.


----------



## nathan79 (Feb 21, 2011)

God, I hope not. As far as I'm concerned, Toronto can keep their position as center of the Canadian universe. People talk of "prosperity" but really what does that even mean? Unless you're the 1% that "prospers" it just makes everything ridiculously unaffordable. Vancouver and the Lower Mainland is already too expensive, not to mention too crowded for my liking. Vancouver has been going downhill since the 80's when Asian investment really began pouring in. The only thing keeping me here is family and friends.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

mode3sour said:


> What if in the future people discover the joys of telecommuting instead of living in a sardine can? GTA would become a wasteland


Telecommuting will, I think, remain a niche. Most people need have to have ready contact with others to do their job effectively. Telecommuting works great for highly siloed non collaborative work.


----------



## brad (May 22, 2009)

andrewf said:


> Telecommuting works great for highly siloed non collaborative work.


Yes but it's not limited to that: I work for a medium-sized (3,500 employees) international consulting firm with a lot of telecommuters (myself included), and most of us manage complex projects and teams of people remotely. With email, telephone, instant-messaging, and virtual meeting software (we don't do video except when watching big all-staff presentations), it's possible to maintain close contact with team members working pretty much anywhere. 

Having been a telecommuter for almost 20 years now, I think it can work well for a variety of jobs, but of course there are many jobs that will never be suited for telecommuting and people will need to be on-site. But I even had a friend who was a factory worker and telecommuted -- he had his own shop at home and brought back the pieces he was working on, did his work at home and at the end of the week brought the finished pieces back to the factory.

In our company we have vice-presidents and senior managers who telecommute fulltime, plus many mid-level and even some junior-level employees who work at home, traveling in for client meetings occasionally. My boss is in Washington DC and I haven't seen him face to face in two years; I was the lead performance reviewer for a research assistant that I never did meet face to face. It seems weird at first, and can definitely be isolating, but it can work.

I think it depends strongly on the type of business you're in, but it is definitely possible to do collaborative work and manage people remotely.


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I've been doing a lot of courses by distance learning and it's funny they see when I'm online and what I've clicked etc if they want. Even most of my last job was calling/emailing/video conf people from the office desk, which could be at home. Right now I go to work to study, and it's not as productive as it would be at home. I plan to do masters by distance

I don't see why 7 million people need to live in GTA. Not all corp headquarters need to be co located.... it's as if everyone from whereever moves to GTA to get a job. There's lots of space in Canada, but that's ok I prefer y'all stay in that can


----------



## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

All good points. The question was whether Toronto is becoming #2. Not in my lifetime!


----------

