Industry

As with many of the oldest and largest cities all over the continent, Toronto got its start and has continued to thrive in large part due to the natural advantages it poses for industry. The city's location on Lake Ontario was crucial to its success for its first century of existence and more. Water at that time was the key and often only means of easily transporting goods and services, and any city with a port was destined to become a major hub. From people and livestock to timber and metals, hundreds of shipped items would arrive in Toronto daily.

As a result, of course, the parts of Toronto which touched Lake Ontario became the most heavily industrialized of the city. It just makes sense to build a factory which makes diapers and other baby products near to the source of freshly-shipped manufacturing supplies, and that's what industries did.

Today, of course, many of these older industrial areas are now out of commission. Some have been allowed to decay over time. In fact, most of the older industrial areas which were no longer used became eye sores. Today, though, many of these areas have been transformed into high end residential areas, with old factories becoming the site of trendy loft apartments housing developers of group collaboration software and other successful residents.

The reason for the older port areas of industry being abandoned was the transportation revolution. First the train, then the combustion engine, and finally the airplane all served to redefine the way manufactured goods were transported. In turn, this meant that the ideal location for many industries was no longer on the water front, but in other places close to the new transportation hubs. Factories turning out heat shrink tubing now found it was more cost effective to locate near to large highways, rail depots, and airport terminals in order to cut down on shipping expenses. Thus, the industrial areas of the city have shifted from the downtown area to the outskirts.

In this series of articles, we are going to take a look at the industrial opportunities Toronto has to offer and what they mean to the different companies who choose to do business here. Cost of business, convenient access to supporting businesses (such as ones who rent out vacuum trucks complete with suction diffusers) , and the price of real estate are all issues you can expect to find explored in this series.

We will also take a look at the new ways in which industry and the way it is being conducted have been redefined in the New Millennium. Today, the term industry is not limited to huge factories which require special zoning. The information industry is a fairly clean one. A PCB designer, for example, has a much lower impact on the value of an area than a company which manufactures refrigerators. thus many of the old rules applying to industry exempt this type of business. Still, there seem to be specific areas where high tech industry does better than others; we will take a look at which types of industries are located where within the city, and why this is.