Letter to the Mayor
Dear Mayor of Toronto;
I’ve lived in Toronto for well over 20 years now, and I’ve seen many changes in its downtown districts.
In my neighborhood, I’ve seen the ever-changing Queen Street West retailing stores, from
low end discount computer stores to the high fashion retailers that we see
today. I’ve also noticed the ever-increasing number of condos going up daily to
re-vitalize the residential living in the downtown core. These are all positive
signs in the development of our great city. However, to bring Toronto to a world class living city, we need
to address various issues from attracting more tourism businesses in our prime
and precious lakefront area, to cleaning up our communities, to reducing the
ever increasing traffic congestion in the city’s roads and major highways.
Unlike overpopulated cities, such as Hong Kong, where they had to create shoreline land mass for development, we should take advantage of our natural Lake Ontario shoreline and maximize its potential. Although, there are some existing attractions already in place, we simply have not tapped into its full potential yet. In Chicago, they have taken advantage of their water front properties and populated its entire area with various tourism attractions, such as museums, parks, shops, great seafood restaurants and water theme park activities. In addition, they have built a large sea-world type attraction where everyone can go to see and learn all things about sea living creatures. There are no shortages of successful ideas and stories for lakefront development in many great cities in the world, and Toronto needs to get onboard and create its own unique lakefront environment and activities for us to enjoy and the world to come to.
With the added growth of residential properties in the downtown area, extra attention is needed to further handle the already congested streets in Toronto. The sea of tail lights on the highway going in and out of Toronto is a continuing problem that the city needs to address. A possible solution is to establish a dedicated highway speed lane for taxi and car pooling vehicles, so people would car pool more often to decrease the volume of single drivers on the road these days, which averaged about 80 percent in the latest poll. With the increasing cost of gasoline, air pollution, parking lots and congestion in our local street, the city should encourage the use of scooter/motorcycle to help solve all the problems mentioned.
Another important aspect of what makes a great city is its communities, and Toronto has a large palette of multicultural inhabitants to create a great canvas for everyone to live in. However, dirty neighborhoods do not spell world class living and there needs to be awareness, control and enforcement put in place in the communities to clean up the appearance of Toronto. Chinatown is one of the worst cases that I’ve seen where garbage disposals and vendors taking up sidewalk space is getting out of hand. The smells in the area are un-bearable during summer months with overflow public garbage bins and litter. Pass 9pm, Chinatown becomes a dump site with mountains of produce waste. Some call it “The Great Wall of China”, and it is left on the sidewalk for hours for private garbage pickup from many of the supermarket retailers in the area. It’s not a pleasant area to see or be in at all after business hours.
In addition to cleaning up the city streets of its garbage, we need to find a solution to the squeegee kids on street corners (a constant hazard to the flow of traffic) and the homeless individuals who sleep on the ventilation ducts in the downtown business district. They are a visual reminder to both the local and tourist alike that Toronto, as great as it may be, can’t deal with poverty and it is a critical issue that needs to be deal with in general.
With the economy getting back on its feet and the unfortunate SARS incidents 2 years ago behind us, the city of Toronto needs to prove to the world that it’s not only a great city to live and work in but it is a world class city to visit and to be in. Immediate action is needed to bring us there, and there is not time to waste.
T
Darth Vader is one of the classic villain that everybody knows, and we get to see his birth in this final chapter. Someone in our office already walked around wearing the Darth Vader's mask; it looked very cool with the heavy breathing sound effect. With the potential success of the movie this time around, I imagine Darth Vader would be one of the most popular costume for this year's Halloween. So, don't be surprise when you see a whole slew of Vaders in all shapes and sizes running around trick-o-threating on the streets during Halloween. Now, that's funny.
B
