Toronto's problems — start here
What this project is, how it asks questions, and how to help: Toronto's Questions — an open research project for a city deciding its future.
Start from a problem. The questions are set; over the coming weeks the research waves run through them in rank order, and these pages update as answers land. Each file below gives one lived problem its full treatment: what the problem is (framing + receipts), what we're asking (research questions organized primary → clusters → subsidiary/tertiary, every harvested question carrying its source tag), what we already have (the evidence shelf: backgrounder · leaf · brief · card · deep surfaces), and what's unexplored. No internal taxonomy needed to navigate — the problem is the front door.
The nine ranked problems
The working order — how and why they're ranked: THE RANKED LIST — Toronto & Torontonians’ problems, ranked.
| # | Problem | File |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cost of living — the umbrella Torontonians actually feel | THE PROBLEM — The cost of living in Toronto |
| 2 | Housing supply & affordability | THE PROBLEM — Housing supply & affordability in Toronto |
| 3 | Homelessness & encampments | THE PROBLEM — Homelessness & encampments in Toronto |
| 4 | Climate adaptation & mitigation — the lock-in window | THE PROBLEM — Climate adaptation and mitigation in Toronto |
| 5 | Transit & congestion | THE PROBLEM — Transit and Traffic Congestion in Toronto |
| 6 | The US trade war & geopolitical rupture | THE PROBLEM — The US Trade War and Toronto's Exposure |
| 7 | Policing & surveillance procurement | THE PROBLEM — Policing and surveillance in Toronto |
| 8 | Data, privacy & the city's own AI | THE PROBLEM — Data, privacy, and Toronto's own AI |
| 9 | Municipal fiscal capacity — the enabler under every row | THE PROBLEM — Toronto's fiscal capacity, the enabler under every other row |
Every other problem — domain rollups (Tiers 3–5 + proposed additions)
Same structure, lighter per problem.
- PROBLEMS — Housing & homelessness — development charges · tenant protections · short-term rentals · newcomer/shelter pressure · homelessness research spine
- PROBLEMS — Economy & work — AI & work · driving automation · precarious work · deep poverty · basic income · immigrant integration · downtown vitality · city workforce · financial rails
- PROBLEMS — Health, care & food — primary care · food insecurity · opioids · aging & LTC · child care · mental-health crisis response · isolation · fire/paramedic · services navigation
- PROBLEMS — Safety & freedom — gun & youth violence · road safety · CSWB & bylaw · equity delivery · reconciliation · accessibility
- PROBLEMS — Climate, environment & infrastructure — water & buried capital · parks SOGR · forest/waste/winter · disaster resilience · climate endowments
- PROBLEMS — Mobility — regional integration & parking · automated-vehicle policy
- PROBLEMS — Learning, youth & culture — education decay · school boards · youth opportunity · arts/libraries/heritage/public realm · pro-sport ownership
- PROBLEMS — Governance, democracy & the meta-problems — provincial power over the city · governance & participation · demographic whiplash · the polycrisis frame
The machinery under the master briefing
- PROBLEM REGISTER — what are Toronto and Torontonians' problems? (one of this library's own project records) — the framing of record. 55 entries (all 68 problems incl. compact combined headers): statement, who's hit, scale with receipts, levers by government level, gaps named. Every spine file's §1 distills from here and links back.
- THE RANKED LIST — Toronto & Torontonians’ problems, ranked — the order. 6-axis scores, 4 perspectives, tiers, entanglement chains — the ratified working order.
- DECISIONS BEFORE 2030 — the full inventory (Phase C, one of this library's own project records) — the clock. Decisions scheduled inside the 2026–2030 term, mapped to the problems they lock in.
- QUESTION_HARVEST.csv — the question corpus. 1,234 rows machine-harvested from 18 program question banks + the register's gap cells, with source file/ID per row. The master briefing files organize 442 of these (machine-counted) and raise 144 new; the remainder stay in their program banks (program-design questions, not problem questions).
- SHELF_MAP.csv — artifact → problem map. 149 topic slugs × problems, many-to-many (192 rows); each slug = a backgrounder/leaf/brief/card set. Orphans named honestly in Shelf Map — Orphans (2026-08-11); SHELF_STEMS.csv is the raw stem inventory.
Known shelf gaps (machine-derived, named not hidden): J1 financial rails · X13 social-services navigation · H3 school-board governance · X12 demographic whiplash have NO artifact serving them.
Solution Suite = separate future intake, fired per problem in ratified rank order. Receipt tiers everywhere: a claim checked against its primary source and formally registered · [URL] ⚠️ still being checked before publish · [corpus] repo file. History (prior editions, pass records): not published.
Source tags like (homes HM12) mark questions carried from the project's own question banks (QUESTION_HARVEST.csv); untagged questions were raised in the 2026-08-11 rewrite.