My friend K. said something interesting last week about Toronto. She doesn’t get why some people/groups are obsessed with Toronto becoming recognized as a “world class” city. She said: “it’s not like we all get a special little prize when we become a world class city.”

London, Tokyo, Paris and New York are world class cities. And from what I’ve been reading, we’re just a second-tier world class city.

  1. Alpha world cities / full service world cities:
    • 12 points: London, New York City, Paris, Tokyo
    • 10 points: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
  2. Alpha world cities / full service world cities:
    • 9 points: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zürich
    • 8 points: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, São Paulo
    • 7 points: Moscow, Seoul

K. has a point. I don’t need to live in an Alpha city, I just like to visit them — I just want to live in a city with an excellent public transit system and a revitalized waterfront. Imaginative architecture and a respect for preserving our historic treasures would be nice too. And while we’re at it, we should think about urban sprawl and community sustainability issues.

bookmark_borderan edgy and well-written novel set in the present time

I’m hosting my book club next week and I need to come up with three book selections for us. As usual, I’m having some trouble but I already have one novel selected.

I still need to think of two more options. I do have these two books on my shelf but they’re not suitable as they’re short story collections:

  1. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July
    • I’ve started it and it’s interesting but we don’t do short stories.
  2. The Breakdown So Far by M. A. C. Farrant
    • Ditto — another book of short stories.

I plan to purchase and read these as well but they’re also not quite appropriate:

  1. Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler
  2. The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler

I’m open to any suggestions. I want an edgy and well-written novel set in the
present time or the future.