At this month's Yonge Talks panel, focusing on the Vital Signs report by the Toronto Community Foundation, it was all about finding Toronto's "wild salmon."
 
Well, it wasn't all about wild salmon, really. Or wild salmon, specifically.
 
But at the end of the free October 11 event, moderator Peter MacLeod of MASS LBP asked attendees to come up with an aspirational project for Toronto that might galvanize citizens, just like a 1990s campaign to bring wild salmon back to the waters around Seattle galvanized people in that city.
 
For Seattle folks, repopulating the waterways with salmon became a symbol of creating a more sustainable city and, when the salmon did come back, provided a bellwether of the city's successes. Prompted by MacLeod, attendees at the Yonge Talks panel came up with ideas like boosting the declining number of bees in Toronto, rallying around food sustainability efforts, encouraging people to visit non-central neighbourhoods, celebrating the city's ravines, nurturing more diversity in leadership and even encouraging interracial marriages—all possible ways to get excited people about their city.
 
Because, as TCF president and CEO Rahul Bhardwaj told the 140 attendees, "Toronto is sound, it's safe but it's certainly struggling." Although the city ranks high on many of the "world's best" lists, there's a certain sense we're not doing as well as we could. Hence the Vital Signs report's subtitle: "Not Too Bad :-)." Despite low crime rates and booms in industries like development, film production and green energy, Bhardwaj pointed to the ongoing discussion over improving transit and the struggles many newcomers have in finding good jobs as sources of ongoing tension.
 
Mary Rowe, vice president and managing director of New York's Municipal Art Society (MAS), was the special guest. She's the one who suggested Toronto try to find its own "wild salmon" project. She also suggested getting people more excited about the transit file—conventionally mired in discussions about funding and who pays for what—by focusing on the fun aspects, like design and public spaces. Eccentric, idiosyncratic projects can make disconnected residents tune in: "Oh, it's a bus stop!"
 
Back when she was a Torontonian, Rowe worked on an early version of Vital Signs. Now she's involved in a report by MAS, which is something of a cousin of Vital Signs, using a survey, rather than Vital Signs' array of existing studies and statistics, to determine the satisfaction of New Yorkers with their city. For a Torontonian, the most astonishing facts in the 2012 MAS report, out this week, were that 94 per cent of New Yorkers surveyed says they had "easy access to transportation" in their neighbourhood and that 88 per cent of them said that creating a world-class transportation hub is a priority for the city. "Everybody gets this," said Rowe.
 
When Bhardwaj suggested that measuring happiness rather than GDP in order to determine the success of a city, Rowe took issue with the idea. Although a city can provide certain things—good transportation, welcoming public spaces, cultural attractions—it can't prevent unhappy marriages, depression or frustrations at work. As well, happiness puts the emphasis on the here and now, rather than the long-term viability of a city.
 
"It's not about my happiness, it's about future generations," said Rowe.
 
Paul Gallant is Yonge Street's managing editor.