Toronto is on the cusp of becoming a world city, with creativity and culture as a core strength and resource.

The components are all in place: Toronto's wealth of human talent; its openness to diversity, its strong social infrastructure; the breadth and depth of higher education institutions; strong and safe neighbourhoods. And last but not least, its extraordinary strengths in creative and cultural industries. It is all here.

The City of Toronto has been investing in the creative economy and while City investments and audience attraction have increased over the last four years (2003-2007), Toronto has not caught up to its competitors.

Since the adoption of the Culture Plan, progress has been achieved on approximately 60% of the recommendations found in the report while only being half way through the timeline.

Toronto faces increased competition from other cities moving aggressively to position themselves as world creative cities - London, New York and Berlin; important second-tier cities - Montreal, Austin, Texas and Providence, Rhode Island, to name a few.

The City of Toronto is committed to moving forward with its business and community partners to pursue the planning vision and goals set out in the framework. A core message has been that no one agency can achieve the outcomes we all desire. Success demands new shared governance systems and partnership models built around a common vision and understanding of the planning issues and opportunities. The purpose of Creative City Planning Framework (PDF file 1 Mb) has been to map out some of the planning assumptions necessary to this collaboration.

We must think more creatively about tools and levers to support creativity in Toronto. To nurture creativity requires a shift in perspective in fiscal and economic development frameworks.