David Crombie’s 4 ways to survive and flourish in the 21st century

Last week, the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) hosted the annual industry luncheon, for which, former Toronto mayor David Crombie was the keynote speaker. The winners of the Reno Awards were also announced at the lunch.

David Crombie carries many titles, including professor, politician, and consultant. In the 1960s, Crombie was a lecturer at Ryerson. He was elected to mayor of Toronto in 1972 and served in that position until 1978. He is widely remembered as the man overseeing the development of the St. Lawrence Market area.

At the BILD luncheon, Crombie had about 15 minutes to speak, which isn’t too long, but he managed to flesh out four interesting points on how to “flourish” and “survive” in the 21st century. NOTE: Crombie was slightly muffled at times, so the quotes may not be exact.

1) Provide for economic well being and opportunity

“That’s why people come to a place and that’s why they stay,” said Crombie. “No economic opportunity, no coming, no staying. It’s also of course important to understand that in any time of change you have to try to keep what you can of the old economy, and get what you can of the new economy, and there’s always going to be a tension between the two.”

New technology, particularly in the fields of communication and transportation is what’s shaping the 21st century. In order to flourish, we must use technology to move people to new opportunities, and this new technology will also create new jobs. Other important changes are globalization and climate change; we need to harness and control these changes.

2) Strike a balance between natural heritage and everything else

“We need to strike a balance with nature,” said Crombie. “Everybody knows that now; they didn't know it a generation ago...We’ve always had a relationship with nature and in the early days at least for those who came from Europe and other parts of the world, nature was understood to be beautiful, bountiful, and dangerous.”

Crombie continues to outline ways we’ve exploited nature by mining, moving, clearing, and burning. Now is the time for sustainable design to improve the economy, to work hand in hand. Ecology, economy, and community are not mutually exclusive things, they are interdependent.  

“Everything is connected to everything else, therefore, since we’re responsible for the actions - our own actions - the idea that you can move in, use up, and move on is no longer possible.”

BILD luncheon

3) Find ways to create human communities

“We have lived in the past number of years in a world of a constant movement of people, from continent to continent, from country to country, from countryside to the city,” Crombie stated. “In all of those movements, we’ve transformed the basic demography of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We take in about 100 (thousand) to 150,000 new people every year.”

It’s up to the government and the new home industry to come up with new ways to accommodate cultural differences and maintain and raise the standard of living. When communities are created, the environment in which a personality is born and shaped is created.  

4) Build public services and infrastructure that serves all our needs

“Roads - you know all these - sidewalks, schools - I wrote these down on the bus - transit, fire, police, emergency services, libraries, health and safety, courts...all of those things, we can’t take them for granted...It needs public, private, and community in the building of public services, of public infrastructure,” he said.

Crombie calls these public services our “connecting tissues,” our “social glue.” It connects generations, public and private, and gives everyone equal access to the number of opportunities that our developed areas provide.

These four points may seem overly general and even obvious to some, but it’s the execution that’s the important part. Have we been accomplishing any of these things as a cohesive unit throughout the GTA? We think so, maybe not to the best of our abilities, but action is being taken, and southern Ontario is arguably one of the best places to live in the world - but there’s room for improvement, and there will never be a time that we can’t do something better.

Feature image via BILD