GTHWA: Regional Supercluster

NRU
Oct. 14, 2015
By Leah Wong

While regional leaders say the Greater Toronto, Hamilton and Waterloo area has the potential to be a global digital supercluster, more needs to be done to create a cohesive strategy to bring municipalities together.

“We don’t tend to think of ourselves as a region but as cities that happen to be located close to each other but [which] are not joined together in any coherent or cohesive way,”

University of Toronto innovation policy lab co-director David Wolfe said at last week’s City-Age conference in Toronto. “The critical issue is whether we are doing everything we’re capable of at all levels of government to capitalize on the economic, innovative potential of this region.”

Though municipalities in the region are in close proximity, there is not the same sense of connectivity as found in an area such as Silicon Valley in the United States.

“We have strength across multiple sectors and strength across this floppy geography, but we have huge challenges in physical connectivity,” said MaRS Discovery District CEO Isle Treurnicht. “We have to be very thoughtful and honest in trying to understand our true competitive advantage.”

She said this requires carving out a unique identity that extends past selling the assets - smart people and strong universities - found in the region. These assets can be found in other top jurisdictions and the Toronto area needs to better sell what makes it unique, which just might be that the region is nice and ambitious.

BMO Financial Group vice-chair Kevin Lynch said the issues the region faces aren’t related to institutions, talent or liveability - these can all be found in the area - but there are challenges with connecting the region together.

This is, in part, a result of a failure to brand the region. Lynch said creating a name for the region, in particular, is a challenge as there are so many communities in the area.

The even bigger challenge is to get all the municipalities within the region to agree that working together as a cohesive unit will be beneficial to everyone. Lynch suggested there needs to be a change in mentality from every municipality needing to have the same things and to every municipality working towards advancements which benefit the entire region.

“If you can produce a Boston-technology corridor...its impacts aren’t just there, they’re actually pervasive and they’re elsewhere,” said Lynch. “Getting out of this sense that everybody has to have the same thing versus create something world class that spills over everywhere.”