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Originally Posted by Crawford
NYC isn't an "amalgamated city".
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Yes, It is. Its merely that the amalgamation occurred on Jan 1st 1898, a century ahead of Toronto's.
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Anyways, the rest of your post seems to deal with Canada v. US, which doesn't appear to be relevant. I thought we were talking immigration hubs, and macro vs. local issues, not really nation-specific differences.
The point is that immigrant hubs like, say, Miami, Toronto or Sydney are the beneficiaries of certain macro trends, and it's a bit myopic to think that local decisionmaking around the arts, or transit, or education, plays any significant role.
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I did address national factors specifically because of DC Denizen implying that there were no quality of life factors (in Toronto) that were materially different.
And because local factors had already been discussed in great detail.
However, if you wish, we can re-hash old ground and point out that indeed there are non-macro factors that affect immigration.
If one were to compare NYC as you did, w/Cleveland, beyond the differential in geography....why such a difference in attracting population, not just immigrants, but internal relocations w/in the U.S.?
Answers can be found in local economic policy choices and local quality of life issues, which are by no means the whole answer.
Of course macro issues have effects.
But let's note that Cleveland and Buffalo and Detroit were boom cities, before they went bust.
That they still had great advantages in terms of logistics, cheap power, voluminous fresh water at all times.
While some of those advantages mattered less in a period of relative de-industrialization/automation that hardly accounts for the extent of decline.
Choices were made either by local areas themselves, or for them by their respective states, that fostered racial tension and segregation, that left central cities w/insufficient resources and mounting debts and crime, and of course this impact immigration levels to those cities.
When do you ever seen a lineup of folks for moving to areas w/high unemployment, shrinking populations, racial tensions and rising crime?
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Toronto has as its motto 'Diversity Our Strength'.
It has, because of both provincial and local polices never had the degree of segregation either by skin colour or by economic cohort than many struggling US centres have.
Of course that impacts our attractiveness to would-be immigrants.
Along w/strong support programs (libraries provide free ESL classes)
Those places lacking that level of support, both practical and symbolic will invariably draw fewer immigrants.
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It is also a matter of the choices made which restrain crime, and which raise the level of 'social security' (not the program).
Yes, many of those are State/Provincial or National in Nature (unemployment benefits, Canada's medicare systems etc.)
But many are intrinsically local.
Quality public transportation, low levels of corruption, good parks systems, and local social supports (free recreation for children, discounted for seniors etc.).
The idea that immigrants are agnostic to all that is rubbish.
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