# How should mid-sized cities really compete?

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2018-01-24

cities, city-of-toronto, economic-development, global-cities, halifax, jennifer-keesmaat, land-use, land-use-planning, land-use-policies, machines, portland, real-estate-development, saskatoon, toronto, uncategorized, urbanism

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Jennifer Keesmaat – the former chief planner of Toronto – recently published an article in Maclean’s called: [Toronto’s unaffordable. Why can’t Halifax or Saskatoon take advantage?](http://www.macleans.ca/economy/torontos-unaffordable-why-cant-halifax-or-saskatoon-take-advantage/) Her argument: 

> _“The hard truth is that many mid-sized cities won’t win the future because they are stuck on a suburban growth model. If the future is green and walkable, they will be left behind.”_

The model city that is held up is Portland – a terrific mid-sized city of only 640,000 people that has used progressive land use policies to build a livable and dense urban center. (In all fairness, [the Portland MSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon) has over 2.4 million people.)

Now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I have a penchant for dense urban centers. I live and I work downtown. And I would happily trade square footage for a more sensible commute and lower transportation costs.

But after I read the article, I couldn’t help but think that progressive land use policies, alone, aren’t enough. Cities, like social networks, experience [network effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). That’s why there’s so much talk these days of winner-take-all urbanism.

All of this is not to say that progressive urban policies are a bad thing. Quite the opposite. I just think there are many other factors at play if we’re talking about taming the hegemony of our global cities.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/how-should-mid-sized-cities-really-compete)*