This isn’t a dead city. There doesn’t seem to be much creativity at the top. It seems to me that Toronto has a split personality, a civic schizophrenia. On the one level there’s the spirit of individuals and small groups who do things, what you might call the vernacular spirit. This is all very informal and genius, quite romantic and full of fun, a great deal of fun but it seems to me the official spirit of Toronto is, ‘Stamp out fun.’ Pompus, impressed with mediocrity if it’s very, very big and expensive.
Jane Jacobs, 1969 CBC Interview
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