[denfromoakvillemilton]

I heard Harris was gonna put Mississauga in Toronto as well but Hazel made him back off.

 

[adma]

Not exactly. More like the various counties in the New York area merging their municipalities, and NYC and these new municipalities forming their own county (this is of course ignoring that each borough of New York is in fact its own county).

A "Greater Toronto Region" would not be as uncommon as you may think. In the last decade, cities across Ontario and Canada have merged with their surrounding municipalities. Ottawa, Hamilton, Halifax, and Kingston are just a few examples. However, most of these annexed not just their surrounding suburbs, but exurbs and hinterland. When Toronto annexed in 1998, it only did so for its immediate suburbs, leaving the latter two untouched.

Finally, having several small suburban municipal towns surrounding a central city is not the most sound form of urban politics. It is like death by a thousand paper cuts, as people move out of the city yet continue to leech off of its resources. What has happened in recent decades is that people don't even associate with the central city, and simply meet all their needs within in their area or along suburban ring roads, leaving the central city to rot. Fortunately Toronto is not there, but has infrastructure designed for such purposes (lots of smaller suburban municipalities, 407 by pass, etc.).

In that case, why even have traditional municipalities at all? You might as well turn Ontario (or any province or state, for that matter) into a whole slew of amalgamated megamunicipalities, i.e. county/region-like entities with no subdivisions whatsoever other than "wards"...

 

[Long Island Mike]

Not exactly. More like the various counties in the New York area merging their municipalities, and NYC and these new municipalities forming their own county (this is of course ignoring that each borough of New York is in fact its own county).

A "Greater Toronto Region" would not be as uncommon as you may think. In the last decade, cities across Ontario and Canada have merged with their surrounding municipalities. Ottawa, Hamilton, Halifax, and Kingston are just a few examples. However, most of these annexed not just their surrounding suburbs, but exurbs and hinterland. When Toronto annexed in 1998, it only did so for its immediate suburbs, leaving the latter two untouched.

Finally, having several small suburban municipal towns surrounding a central city is not the most sound form of urban politics. It is like death by a thousand paper cuts, as people move out of the city yet continue to leech off of its resources. What has happened in recent decades is that people don't even associate with the central city, and simply meet all their needs within in their area or along suburban ring roads, leaving the central city to rot. Fortunately Toronto is not there, but has infrastructure designed for such purposes (lots of smaller suburban municipalities, 407 by pass, etc.).

E: Interesting thought concerning the NYC area-I recall that a study suggesting these changes once was made and the biggest difference is that the close-in NJ counties are not in NYS specifically Bergen,Hudson and Essex Counties...
Hudson County,NJ (the Jersey City area) in ways can almost be NYC's "sixth Borough" because of its size and proximity...Another thought was NYC's 5 counties/Boroughs along with LI's Nassau and Suffolk Counties seceding from NYS to become the 51st US State...
The biggest differences is that the entire Toronto region is part of just one province instead of two states...

If NYC was to merge they would have to literally dissolve the governmental functions of the 5 NYC Counties such as District Attorneys...I feel that NYC would just be too large for this to even be thought of let alone done...
It was hard enough in NYS for Richmond County (Staten Island) to try to secede from NYC (90s) or Suffolk County's 5 eastern Towns to form Peconic County (70s-80s)...the monetary support is just not there because for those Counties
to go out "on their own" the tax base has to be there...I recall that in SI's case an independent City of Richmond would have much higher taxes as a good example instead of the "subsidy" they get from a unified NYC...

Thoughts from LI MIKE

 

[adma]

In that case, why even have traditional municipalities at all? You might as well turn Ontario (or any province or state, for that matter) into a whole slew of amalgamated megamunicipalities, i.e. county/region-like entities with no subdivisions whatsoever other than "wards"...

And the more I think of it, even if it makes wonky political sense to some, this kind of Chatham-Kent-esque megaamalgamation tactic is the governance version of Corbusian clear-cut urban renewal.

Then again, to a Google/GPS generation for whom the "common geography" imparted by traditional road maps, with their curious, piquant emphases on county/municipal boundaries and relative population sizes of communities, is an archaism, it doesn't matter one whit...