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Toronto Looks To Hamiltonians For Strategic Vision And Co-opts 'Our City, Our Future'

By Adrian Duyzer
Published September 23, 2011

Toronto has launched its "Official Plan and Municipal Comprehensive Reviews" and in doing so, they apparently turned to Hamilton's engaged citizenry for inspiration: they are calling this process "Our City, Our Future".

Take a look at the first slide on the City of Toronto's homepage or at the page that describes this official plan review. Not only did they use the "Our City, Our Future" moniker, their logo shares remarkable similarities too.


The logo for Hamilton's Our City, Our Future website.


The logo for Toronto's official plan review process.

We hope Toronto's Our City, Our Future initiative is supported by as many citizens as Hamilton's own Our City, Our Future initiative was, and we hope that Toronto's official plan ultimately reflects the sort of urban vision that Hamilton's Our City, Our Future campaign sought to promote.

Adrian Duyzer is an entrepreneur, business owner, and Associate Editor of Raise the Hammer. He lives in downtown Hamilton with his family. On Twitter: adriandz

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By Mr. Meister (anonymous) | Posted September 23, 2011 at 13:16:05

If my memory serves me then the whole Hamilton "Our City Our Future" was undertaken to try and lobby council to build the new stadium at the West Harbour sight. Since that did not happen and the sight still sits empty looking for inspiration I hope Toronto has better luck with their "Our City Our Future" website. Oh wait the Toronto website is actually looking for real input rather then more "I like" clicks. The Hamilton version was simply trying to gather votes for a small group's vision. Hopefully their site will actually work out for them.

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By RB (registered) | Posted September 26, 2011 at 13:02:55 in reply to Comment 69988

Was it really established for the WH stadium debate? Huh.. I thought it went back farther than that; but then again, my memory sucks.

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By OCOF (anonymous) | Posted September 23, 2011 at 13:27:30

Yeah almost 3500 supporters is a small group when it comes to citizen input. Pales in comparison to all those other issues that attracted thousands of citizen voices. For the record, council voted in favour of the OCOF motion.

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By Mr. Meister (anonymous) | Posted September 24, 2011 at 01:06:09 in reply to Comment 69990

Colour me strange but I find 3,500 votes in a city of 600,000 a small group. Of those 3,500 how many were actual discrete different people because just the odd person might actually artificially inflate the numbers by doing it twice or thrice or more. That all being said in the end it was still a failure because the stadium was not built at West Harbour and that site still sits empty looking for inspiration.

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By NortheastWind (registered) | Posted September 25, 2011 at 00:51:01 in reply to Comment 70032

Whaaaaaaat?? 600,000? 500,000 and much of that is rural who don't give a f'k

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By not a chance its stolen (anonymous) | Posted September 23, 2011 at 22:07:02

banned user deleted

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By Mr. Meister (anonymous) | Posted September 24, 2011 at 01:01:50 in reply to Comment 70029

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By That guy (anonymous) | Posted September 25, 2011 at 14:21:20

logos and fonts don't mean shit - check back in 10 years and see which City did what.

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By misterque (registered) - website | Posted September 26, 2011 at 09:13:43

In the area of pithy aphorisms they have all been done before. You could argue that Our City Our Future is just an adaptation of "All for one and one for all." These catchy phrases occasionally work for products that spend millions advertising their brand, but I would imagine that for lackluster initiatives of middling cities they are just a waste of money. A great example would be Vision 2020. Not only is Vision 2020 the same city planning moniker for Hamilton OHIO, it has been used by the US Military and country singers as well (http://goo.gl/o1Xw9). So does the name matter at all. Nope. It is the effort of the people and the process that is behind the name that matters.

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