This little corner’s taken its whacks at the Ford “vision” before, but the saga of the Fort York bridge just underlines it all over again.
The context for the discussion is ably set up by cityslikr over at AFUITBS and by the comments on this piece by Luca de Franco over at Spacing.
I won’t go through all the details again – all the arguments about linking neighbourhoods, planning, infrastructure, traffic flow, community-building and public space have been made already – but nothing illustrates the right-wing approach to governing quite like this.
No commitment to civil society.
No awareness that there’s such a thing as community.
No recognition that sometimes you need to spend money in order to realize long-term benefits that can’t always be measured on a balance sheet.
Nothing beyond a small-minded, sadly limited fixation on short-term fiscal details and idiotic meaningless campaign slogans and “respect for the taxpayer.”
Nothing but a gormless shrug and a determination to sell everything off, because after all, everyone knows the private sector does everything better.
And while we’re at it, of course, contracting out garbage collection to the private sector, killing hundreds of well-paid unionized jobs in the process. But hey, it’s all about saving money, and respect for the taxpayer, don’t you know.
The right-wing vision. At its essence, there’s nothing there.
Related posts:
- Cityslikr finds a home at Torontoist
- Organized labour under attack, from Pinochet to Ford to Wisconsin
- Moments of optimism on the Queen car
- All the wankers taking cellphone pictures of TTC operators …
- Another morning, another false equivalency from Metro Morning
