What are the Big Ideas that can re-engage Torontonians in the city and lead it triumphantly into the 21st century?

What are the ideas that will enable us to deal with the growing problems of poverty, inequality, transit, housing, infrastructure, the public realm?

That’s what we at the Star want to find out. With your help, we can rediscover the power of an idea to change the way we live.

Long admired as “the city that works,” Toronto has perhaps grown so accustomed to success that it forgot that nothing can be taken for granted. This year — an election year — is a good time to go back to basics and remind ourselves how imagination, dreams and ideas can transform not just the city, but the world.

In recent years, plagued by recessionary economics, polarized politics and a leadership vacuum, we no longer share a vision of what Toronto could and should be. We have squandered decades and let the city idle while its population and congestion have grown exponentially.

And so transit can no longer keep up with demand and housing has slipped beyond the reach of countless thousands of Torontonians. Poverty is entrenched across whole swaths of the city’s inner suburbs, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to unprecedented proportions.

The middle class, the bedrock of Toronto, is itself under siege.

But our leaders seem powerless or unwilling to do anything about it.

How do we catch up? How do we reimagine Toronto and regain control over our civic destiny? That could mean anything from taking down the Gardiner Expressway and improving transit to building affordable housing and planting more trees.

But most important, perhaps, is how to re-involve Torontonians in their city.

And where are the ideas that will inspire, excite and move us to lift the city out of its current malaise and allow it to realize the potential that was once the envy of the world?

These are some of the questions the Star will address in the upcoming year. We can’t promise to answer them all, but with your help, we will try.

To that end, we will seek input from residents and experts alike. The Star has teamed up with the Martin Prosperity Institute, a recognized thought leader in what makes great cities, and Evergreen CityWorks, an exciting new initiative that builds collaborations aimed at creating better cities.

And, of course, we want to hear from you. Every day in February, we will run an idea piece by various Torontonians on a topic of their own choosing. More articles will follow, and in time a selection of the best ideas will be published in a handbook of sorts, a guide to the finest thinking about 21st-century Toronto.

Our hope is that candidates in the October municipal election will feel compelled to respond to these ideas, not simply squabble amongst themselves. We hope the election will be fought on an agenda of ideas, not the whim of personalities.

We hope, too, that voters won’t fall into the trap of confusing slogans for ideas.

Regardless of what one thinks about Mayor Rob Ford — love him or hate him — it’s important to keep in mind that his message of municipal waste, self-serving elites and hard-done-by residents resonates throughout the city.

If nothing else, Ford’s election was a wake-up call. For a great many, Toronto is less a community now than simply where they live and work.

One way or another, the issues we face stem from the cynicism, even contempt, with which so many view Toronto and its institutions. This loss of respect, which extends beyond the civic arena, is global.

In the popular imagination, politicians are crooks and leaders only in it for themselves.

But in a world where the 400 richest families in the United States are worth upwards of $2 trillion (U.S.) — more than the entire $1.8 trillion (U.S.) GDP of Canada — is it any wonder the rest of us are so skeptical?

Of all the problems the city must deal with, this growing cynicism is among the most intractable.

Still, there are plenty of reasons for optimism. The big move downtown has brought new vitality to the core. For the first time since the 1970s, growth in the city outpaces that of the suburbs. A huge demographic shift is underway, one from which Toronto has benefitted enormously.

Sadly, though, we have been caught unprepared. Transit can’t cope with demand. Indeed, we’re barely able to manage the system we do have. Sections of the subway system haven’t been updated since they were built in the 1950s. Signaling is archaic, as is much of TTC technology and ticketing. The TTC is a symbol as well as a symptom; the entire civic infrastructure — sewers, roads, sidewalks, power grid — is under-maintained and increasingly inadequate.

We relearned that lesson most recently in the ice storm that left 300,000 hydro customers without service for up to eight days. In most cases, power was lost when freezing rain brought down trees that in turn brought down electrical cables. Not only does the urban canopy go largely neglected, the failure to bring the power network into the 21st century, with mini-grids and underground cables, has left Toronto vulnerable to the sort of extreme weather events that have become more frequent.

Last July, the city was inundated when a month’s worth of rain fell in a few hours. Again, the city was unprepared.

The progressive impulse that for decades defined Toronto has all but vanished as the beleaguered middle class succumbs to the stress of paycheque-to-paycheque existence and fears of the future. The federal government has effectively abandoned Canada’s cities, and the provinces are too poor to pick up the slack.

In a city where so many feel stretched to the limit, even the emptiest promise of lower taxes is irresistible. The would-be leader who tells voters he/she would introduce new “revenue tools” to bring our crumbling infrastructure up to a state of good repair doesn’t stand a chance.

Among the major issues we face in 2014 is how to come up with the annual $2 billion needed for transit. So far, the debate has been framed in terms of how much new taxes will cost the average Ontarian, not how much money enhanced transit will save each and every one of us.

Transit is the obvious answer, but there are others. In the 21st-century metropolis, proximity is the new mobility. But we are loath to allow cyclists and pedestrians to share the streets if it means reducing the dominance of cars and trucks.

Toronto’s cycling infrastructure is a small but telling example: in 2001, the city pledged to create 405 kilometres of bike lanes by 2011. As of 2013, we had installed 113 km. Undoubtedly that pleased many in a city where the car is king, but this sort of short-sighted self-interest hurts even those who want bikes off the roads. After all, if more people pedal, walk or take transit, fewer drive.

Clearly, decisions like these are highly emotional. How often have we been told that Toronto needs to have a “mature” discussion, a “grown-up” debate?

We do, but we still haven’t.

That’s why 2014 will be a make-or-break year for the city. It’s temping to say that failure is not an option, but it is. Cities don’t fall during one mayoral term, of course, or even two or three.

Restoring civic faith and rebuilding the infrastructure — transit, power, sewers, housing — will cost billions and take years. We must learn how to tackle them one by one, step by step, and understand them not as discrete, one-off projects but as the ongoing business of the city — or at least, the city that works.

That’s why we need new approaches, proposals and suggestions, new ways of thinking and new ideas. That’s why we need to hear from you.

Got a big idea? We’ll be launching a formal call for ideas from Star readers in February, with further details to come. So start thinking and think big.

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