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Saving Toronto: 10 City Builders Tell Us How
Once celebrated as the city that works, Toronto is a city on the brink.
Ilana Altman, Zahra Ebrahim, Anne Golden, Tim Gray, Ken Greenberg, Franz Hartmann, Josh Matlow, Matti Siemiatycki, Enid Slack, Bianca Wylie.
Strained by urban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, and chronic under-funding, Canada's largest city is coming apart at the seams. Its promise — of livability, opportunity, and innovation — is being undermined by years of inaction and political gridlock.
But all is not lost.
In Saving Toronto, ten leading city builders set out a bold, practical roadmap to turn things around. In their essays, they highlight the city's problems in governance, finances, housing, transport, environment, technology, infrastructure, social cohesion, and public space and offer coordinated responses.
This is a wake-up call — Toronto's future can still be saved.
Ilana Altman, Zahra Ebrahim, Anne Golden, Tim Gray, Ken Greenberg, Franz Hartmann, Josh Matlow, Matti Siemiatycki, Enid Slack, Bianca Wylie.
Strained by urban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, and chronic under-funding, Canada's largest city is coming apart at the seams. Its promise — of livability, opportunity, and innovation — is being undermined by years of inaction and political gridlock.
But all is not lost.
In Saving Toronto, ten leading city builders set out a bold, practical roadmap to turn things around. In their essays, they highlight the city's problems in governance, finances, housing, transport, environment, technology, infrastructure, social cohesion, and public space and offer coordinated responses.
This is a wake-up call — Toronto's future can still be saved.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 7, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 19, 2026
*2.5 stars*
Recycled suggestions that fight past battles while avoiding one hard truth. For all the good intentions, there are ideas and leaders but no people in what appears a fairly theoretical city without actual citizens. All the ideas in the world don't get far if leaders don't convince the people to go along with them. And THAT is the work missing from the city today, and this book. A lack of inspiration to the political courage required actually lead people to the excellent ideas here.
Recycled suggestions that fight past battles while avoiding one hard truth. For all the good intentions, there are ideas and leaders but no people in what appears a fairly theoretical city without actual citizens. All the ideas in the world don't get far if leaders don't convince the people to go along with them. And THAT is the work missing from the city today, and this book. A lack of inspiration to the political courage required actually lead people to the excellent ideas here.
November 1, 2026
I read "Saving Toronto" in the lead up to the 2026 Toronto muncipal elections to gain a broader perspective on the city's situation, recent history and related matters. The book's strength is the variety of the perspectives from the different contributors who all have something different to add. While there are some moments of hope here and there, overall the book seemed quite pessimistic in tone. The impact of outside forces like Ontario, the federal government and the USA, are just some of the 'villains' that seem to make life more difficult for Toronto.
August 15, 2026
Simultaneously a book of vast hope and immense frustration; the majority of these solutions are straightforward and commonsense, but due to a number of reasons laid out here (such as the provincial government's repeated overreach to cripple municipal democracy) we just aren't able to do them. We need a city charter NOW.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews