Toronto Compared to Eleven Other Commercial Leaders

Like it or not, Toronto is becoming a global player in commerce. If you couldn't tell that from all of those skyscrapers downtown, then you could look at a study released yesterday that compares eleven "Centers of Global Commerce", including our humble city.

The study, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Partnership for New York City, looked at eleven major commercial centres (Atlanta, Chicago, Frankfurt, London, L.A., New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Toronto) and compared them across nine variables like transportation infrastructure, geographic location and financial clout.

The results?

Toronto is on the verge of becoming a strong international presence and could become competitive with much more established cities listed in the survey. We ranked high in "ease of doing business" (second place) and "safety and security" (fourth). We're in the middle of the pile when it comes to education (fifth) and technology (seventh).

And the bad news?

We come in dead last when it comes to "transportation assets". It wasn't a huge surprise, but it's still sad to see Toronto at the bottom of the pile when it comes to moving people and goods around.

Okay, so the study comes from a place that isn't exactly out for everyone's interests - this is, after all, published by an accounting firm and a group of American business leaders. Still, our commercial strength can be important and ends up determining a lot about where our city is going. And anything that focuses attention on improving our mass transit infrastructure is a good thing.

See the whole report here.

photo: Image by 24by36's photos from the blogTO flickr pool.