The first step is to test the concept. This means acknowledging the need to create this bi-national region. While the Ontario part has been relatively more successful in recent years than the New York State part, there is no justification for either complacency or despair. The global economic environment is changing so rapidly that today’s winners can be tomorrow’s losers, and vice versa. We need to make use of our combined strength.

We also need to acknowledge the existing relationship. We are, in a sense, married to each other. We live in the same house. The question is whether we’re going to meet the international market hand in hand or go our separate ways. Again, circumstances argue for us to join hands.

We suggest an ambitious but realistic goal. Toronto already ranks in the second tier of world cities. It lacks the size and diversity of a New York, London, Tokyo, or Los Angeles. But it ranks in economic function above more specialized cities such as Washington, Houston, or Rome. It occupies a second tier along with cities such as San Francisco and Brussels.

If the region is to maintain its ranking it must innovate and work hard toward the goal of becoming more competitive.

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Having announced our strategic intent, enlarged our way of seeing the region, and committed to draw on the best talent we can find, what remains is to build the region network by network. The links across the region, after all, are specific not general. People in tourism work with people in tourism. People in education, the professions, specific industries, agriculture, and so forth, work together.

There are risks in this kind of bi-national collaboration. Given the dynamic, even turbulent, global environment, however, it seems the risks of trying to go it alone are even greater.

Photographic Credits:
1. The "Horseshoe" Falls, from Table Rock, Niagara Falls Ontario. Urban Design Project Archives
2. H.H.Richardson's Landmark Buffalo State Hospital Complex
3. The second Welladn Canal in downtown St. Catharines, circa 1870. St. Catherines Historical Museum
4. View of Casino Niagara from the US side. Foit-Albert Architects.
5. Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House, Buffalo.
6. The stone wall of the historic Schoellkoopf power plant still stands in the Niagara Gorge. Foit-Albert Architects.
7. Satellite view of the Niagara Region. U.B. Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth.
8. View of the Niagara Gorge looking toward Whirlpool Bridge. Courtesy of Foit-Albert Architects.
9. Greater Buffalo Niagara International airport. Buffalo Exonomic Renaissance Corporation.

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