The purpose of this research paper is to determine if the overall size of Toronto's budget is within a reasonable range of other cities' that are similarly ranked to Toronto.
The 16 cities chosen, were based on the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranking of world cities.(http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2016t.html) To simplify the research, only municipalities with budgets published in English were selected. The most recent, fully published budget on the municipalities' website were used. Also Alpha++ cities were excluded, as the size of those cities' budgets were magnitudes larger than Toronto's.
One limiting factor in the research conduced was that only the official political boundary for a city was used. For example Toronto's metropolitan region may include Peel, and Durham for some, other's may consider the boundary area of metropolitan Toronto to include Hamilton and Newmarket. The discrepancy between the official boundaries of a city and a metropolitan area pronounced particularly for places such as Sydney and Atlanta. However by prorating the total budget expenditure by total population gives how much each city is spending per individual. This allows for some direct comparison.
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