There are few cities on earth better than London — but a lot of our rivals are catching up fast. That was my feeling as I walked the streets of Montreal and Toronto on a recent visit to Canada.
Walking was much easier — huge chunks of Montreal are pedestrianised in the summer months, leaving locals and tourists to roam free and enjoy alfresco dining. Yet remarkably, vehicle traffic has not come to a standstill.
The culinary scene was fantastic. I was stunned by the diversity of the food on offer, from indulgent Korean street food, to the Thai-Hungarian fusion restaurant I visited, to my personal favourite: Rasta Pasta, an Italian-inspired Jamaican joint.
That’s a far cry from what’s available in London, where high streets are bloated with Five Guys, Honest Burgers, Nando’s, Yo Sushis and Itsus. It’s a damning indictment of our great city that in some quarters you’re more likely to see two Prets on the same street than two independent restaurants.
And if you fancy an after-dinner drink at a bar in Toronto, there’s no fear of being kicked out at 10.30pm.
Oh, and did I mention all the public transport has air-conditioning as standard? And that’s not even a new thing, it’s been true for years. The threat of sweaty armpits on the 7am commute has long since been extinguished.
Citizens are trusted to look after themselves, and they do
Marijuana is legal there, too, and you can get your fix from licensed stores on the high street, rather than a dark alley. And yet civilisation has not collapsed, addiction rates aren’t skyrocketing and the city’s youth is not roaming the streets in a daze, drool hanging from their mouths, as some here would have us believe. Citizens are trusted to look after themselves, and they do.
What frustrates me about all the great assets of these two cities is they are all things London could so easily emulate. They don’t require billions of pounds of investment. A few new policies would do it: more pedestrianisation, less corporatisation, more liberalisation, and a couple more air-conditioning units. Job done. London massively improved.
These two Canadian cities are far from perfect, but if we here don’t soon have what they have, our claim to being one of the world’s best cities will become a fantasy.
