I knew London was Conservative, but I'm shocked by just how much!

London On 1919 or 2019: The State of the City: 

Bounding into the twentieth Century* or a vision of the future a generation behind.

While some were relieved that the Mayor’s agenda was not as “right-wing” as they feared it could be, it certainly was avowedly conservative. And by conservative, I mean, old-fashioned; an elegiac reflection on issues and concerns that drove us a generation ago. It’s all about old-fashioned debt reduction, savings, and any job as an “honest” job. What was notably missing was any reference to or mention of the issues driving today’s feelings of uncertainty, i.e., climate change and work precarity. As a result, the Mayor’s priorities were devoid of any real vision of and for the City’s future.

In fairness to the Mayor, it can be said that he was tailoring his speech to the particular audience. The Chamber of Commerce is characterized by its dogged commitment to status-quo business stability, so statements of radical progressive egalitarian innovation are likely to fall flat. However, even the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has taken a strong and urgent position on combatting climate change (It’s bad for business and business stability), even vociferously supporting carbon-pricing (www.chamber.ca/media/new-releases/20181212-Economic-realities-of-getting-Canada%27s-climate-policy-right/). It has also issued statements regarding the future of work particularly the changing nature of the skills required in an increasingly automated and knowledge-based precarious workplace (see. CCC. 2018. Skills for An Automated Future. March 2018).

Neither of these issues made an appearance in the state of the City address. Possibly London is immune? No, it’s more likely the new Mayor hasn’t caught on to the realities of the twenty-first century and the rolling apocalyptic uncertainly that highlights the fact that it is no longer your parent’s environment or your parent’s job market. The Mayor is your parent and his views are a generation behind.

This shouldn’t be surprising from remarks that were framed by references to Henry Ford (1863-1947) at the beginning and Lester B. Pearson (1897-1972) at the end. Mayor Holder did start the speech by setting a context of uncertainly, but then quickly showed he doesn’t understand where that uncertainty is coming from. For him the uncertainty is about debt, spending, and associated levels of unemployment (which are actually reasonably good in London). However, today’s true uncertainly rests in our responses to climate change. We have no real idea of how climate change will batter urban and rural infrastructures and hence our lives. As a result, we have no real plans for how to adapt and address those changes. This is the future crisis for the City of London. Even at the mundane level, cycles of freezing, thawing, snow and rain make the trip across the Thames, from West to East London, uncertain depending on flooding, snow loads and associated accessibility to sidewalks, roads and bike paths. 

The uncertainly in the labour market isn’t about the fact that a portion of the “non/not-employed” pool is unconnected to the jobs that are out there. It’s more complicated and really about what sort of jobs are out there and what skills are required for those jobs. The point about precarity in the labour market is that sometimes a “job” is worse than no job at all. In all conceptions of the worker-citizen, the end point of work is not to just hold a “job,” it is to hold a stable and “decent” job. When you combine the Mayor’s concern regarding the “not-employed” rate and the poverty experienced by the “most vulnerable”, the agenda starts to sound very much like the old “work-fare” solutions where people are forced/connected to work for next to nothing in jobs no one else will take because it is not “decent” work. 

The non-employment force is multifaceted, people drop out of the search for work for reasons. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics identifies two groups of non-employed: the “self-unemployed” which includes retirees, stay-at-home-parents, and others doing unpaid work, and those who have given up looking for work. The increase in “self-unemployed” is not surprising given the aging nature of Canadian society the population of retirees is increasing, and as the cost of childcare is prohibitive for many low-income Canadian families the stay-at-home-parent self-unemployment option is a necessity. Like the Mayor, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ main concern is the group who have dropped out looking for employment. However, unlike the Mayor, the Bureau of Labor sees the issue as a disconnection between people and skills. “[T]hese non-employed workers tend to be those who have been left-behind by the economic changes of the last generation. Their jobs have been replaced by technology or have gone oversees, and they can no longer find work that pays well.” The example is Virginia, where unemployment rates have actually decreased but rates of non-employment have increased as male miners have been unable to reskill to meet the needs of the changing economy. The problem, then, is less about connecting non-employed persons to the jobs available through some sort of “jobs introduction service” called London Jobs Now, it is about connecting non-employed persons to skills development. What is needed is innovation, training, and retooling so that Londoner’s can adapt to the changing economy, not employer-employee speed-dating.

What is missing from the Mayor’s vision is the language of and commitment to innovation and adaptation. What is offered is the hoary programs and planning of a generation ago (which really didn’t work all that well then, either.)

According to the Mayor, London is on the edge (whether the cutting edge or the bleeding edge is not clear) of the Tor-Buff-Ches mega-region as identified by Richard Florida, but it is the edge and margin. A mega-region is an integrated set of cities and their surrounding suburban hinterlands across which labour and capital can be reallocated at low cost (Florida, Gudden, Mellander, 2007 https://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/Florida,%20Gulden,%20Mellander_Mega-Regions.pdf). Generally, the economies of these regions are in the scale of $100 billion or more and can be mapped by the “continuously (or very nearly contiguously) lighted areas seen from space at night,” combined with other variables such as patent applications, scientific innovations, population, commuting patterns, etc. (it’s actually a cool study). “Tor-Buf-Ches stretches, North from Buffalo, and Rochester, taking in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in Canada. With a population of 16 million; it generates output of nearly $600 billion, more than Sweden’s, placing it among the world’s 25 largest economy" (Florida. 2014 The Mega Regions of North America. http://martinprosperity.org/content/the-meg-regions-of-north-america/). Not the largest in the world, but in the top 20.  

I’m being very knit-picky here, but I went and looked at the maps provided in Florida et. al, 2007 and Florida 2014 and it is generous to say that London is on the edge, possibly the far-hinterlands, of the region. It is, however, located in the dead zone between Toronto (the Tor in Tor-Buff-Ches) and Windsor (as part of Detroit in the Chi-Pitt region).  

This mega-region discourse is all fine, but what is missing is the crux of Florida’s views on urban development and what makes for a strong urban community – that is the concept of the creative class. While there are good criticisms of Florida’s arguments, it cannot be discounted that what makes a mega-region and a great city within a mega-region work is innovation and creativity. A strong urban environment is supported by and requires a diverse, artistic, dynamic, and “bohemian” population of young active people. This is a class (and unfortunately it is that kind of class) based on skills useful in the knowledge-based economy, engineering/computer/scientific innovation, artistic and creative production, and services. If the zeitgeist of a city attracts young, diverse, hipsters, business and capital will follow. This is an agenda for city planning that is about innovation and diversification developing a concentrated downtown “creative-core” that encourages work and play, rather than “singular focus on projects such as sports stadiums, iconic buildings and shopping centres” (to quote from Florida’s Wikipedia page), and I would add, one-off national events like the Junos or the odd figure skating national final or bonspiel. This zeitgeist is found in happenings that are ongoing on weekends and evenings and easily accessible by active-transport or mass-rapid transit. In other words, cities need to be designed for urban millennials.

This wasn’t on offer in the Mayor’s address. How the city integrates itself from the bleeding edge to being an integral active part of the Tor-Buff-Ches mega-region was only addressed through a mention of high-speed rail service. That’s not a vision for a city, that’s a vision for one more bedroom community of Toronto – a suburb.

So as a current reflection on what London is and can be, the Mayor reinforces the view of London as a “conservative county-seat backwater” with little aspiration to develop as a truly urban environment befitting Canada’s 11^th largest “city. No wonder KW is eclipsing us, it understands it’s a city. All-in-all, colour me unimpressed, but at least there was bacon.

Then to just add in the boot to all this and particularly the boot to the City's minimum wage workforce: 

My sorrow at the state of London was further compounded by a tweet I received as I was writing this. Efforts to go ahead with increasing the minimum wage for the City’s parttime seasonal workers (i.e, students and youths) to the $15.00/hr cancelled by the provincial government were defeated. Nine councilors thought it better to follow the “rules” of the provincial government and the market and save me less than a $1.00 a year on my property taxes. This being a City that recognizes that a living hourly wage in the city is $15.58/hr! For the nine there appeared to be little consideration of what economic effect that extra $1.00/hr could have when spent in the City of London, or that the $14.00hr minimum wage is a provincially mandated MINIMUM not a MAXIMUM! It is a complete disregard for strong urban community built on inclusion and diversity and rather is based on the idea that the City is well within its mandate to exploit its young part-time employed citizens. It is a confirmation of the complete lack of vision and continuing Victorian ideals of the conservative market. Shame.

*Shout out to Abe Oudenson’s (I know I spelled that wrong) tweet that characterized the whole Chamber of Commerce Breakfast as bounding into the 1900s. It summed up the whole event for me.