One likes to be positive. One doesn't want to appear to be overly critical. And so, those of us who live downtown say that we live downtown because we like living downtown. We don't go around saying that we live downtown because wild horses couldn't drag us out to live in the suburbs. That would only upset people who are fond of suburbs and who would no more live downtown than walk to a corner store. And anyway, it's not as if anyone's going to tear the suburbs down and start over. Just because they made a ghastly mistake.

Downtowners are not evangelical about downtown life. We don't go out to the suburbs and install a few alleys, and some Korean variety stores, and a few buskers. We don't send out busloads of people to go walk around Buckingham Way or Bodleyhead Crescent or Cardigan Court in order to bring some life to the apparently uninhabitable sidewalks.

But I wish the suburbs would give the downtown the same wide berth. Of course, it's more difficult for them. Downtown has the theatres and the cafés and the museums and the galleries and the restaurants. They have the lawns.

But it's not the regular visits of suburbanites to the downtown that I'm complaining about. They have to work. They have to have lunch somewhere. So I'm not talking about the ridiculously enormous one-occupant SUVs, and the neurotically sensitive car alarms. I'm not talking about the tendency of certain drivers to sit in the middle of an intersection because they expect the backed-up cars in front of them to evaporate when the light changes. We can't blame them: They're from the suburbs. They're not used to anyone coming the other way.

What I'm talking about is the inability of the suburbs to keep suburbia to themselves. Let me give you an example.

Not far from where I live, there was a downtown gas station on a busy downtown street corner. It was quite a big and rather modern gas station, but a few months ago it was demolished. Fool that I am, I thought that perhaps the gas station had proven to be too big -- too suburban -- and therefore not profitable enough for a valuable downtown lot. Maybe they were going to replace that single gas station with a half-dozen retail stores and two or three floors of offices or apartments above -- the kind of thing that makes the downtown the downtown.

But this is not how the modern world thinks. Perhaps this is because the modern world lives in the suburbs and feels compelled to spread the good word of urban sprawl. I passed the busy street corner not long ago and discovered the asphalt plain of a much bigger Esso station. It's now the kind of gas station that you might expect to see beside a six-lane highway. It has light standards and pump bays that look as if a 747 could refuel there.

It may be that I was already overly sensitive to the suburbanization of the downtown -- because only a few blocks down the street, a big, new liquor store has recently opened. It replaced the rather cozily cramped little outlet that had been on the same block for decades, and I confess to a certain eager anticipation as the new store's opening day approached. I pictured narrow aisles crammed with a dizzying selection of bottles. I pictured high, stacked shelves, and open wine crates on the floors, and customers standing shoulder to shoulder as they inspected this abundant cornucopia. In short, I pictured the charmingly cramped, slightly idiosyncratic, efficient use of space that you find in the best wine stores in the downtowns of the greatest cities of the world -- a list that does not include Toronto, apparently.

Our vast new neighbourhood liquor store is largely about parking, checkout counters, and vacant, well-polished floor space. Its current stock could be displayed on half the acreage were it not deemed necessary to keep three feet of empty air between all customers at all times. The store's prevailing aesthetic is soulless suburban mall. It no more belongs in the downtown than a gas station the size of an aircraft carrier does.

In early December, two highly regarded economic and urban geographers, Richard Florida and Meric Gertler, released a fascinating report that was commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation, and by the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. Let us sail on by the seething insecurities revealed by the neurotically conjunctive names of these provincial agencies, and go to the meat of Florida's and Gertler's report.

In Competing on Creativity: Placing Ontario's Cities in North American Context, Gertler and Florida argue that creativity has replaced raw materials or natural harbours as the crucial wellspring of economic growth, and that the economic competitiveness of the nation as a whole rests on the shoulders of our cities. Our stunningly neglected cities, I might say. Using indices that they refer to as "Talent," "Bohemian" and "Mosaic," their research makes it clear that creative people -- now our most valuable resource -- are drawn to urban centres by features that many suburban minds think of as quaint, eccentric, accidental and expendable. A thriving arts community, for instance. Diverse, living neighbourhoods, for instance. Vibrant street life, for instance. A concentrated blend of commercial and residential, for instance. Possibly the list could include reasonably small gas stations and cozily cramped wine stores.

In other words, when a downtown neighbourhood rallies against the widening of a street, or the construction of some unsuitably enormous condominium or business, or the intrusion of a McDonald's drive-through on a long-established streetscape, the residents are not giving vent to the prissy, citified sensitivities of the overly educated. In drawing a line against the invasion of the downtown by the suburban, they are actually defending what our governments are belatedly beginning to realize is the heartbeat of our economic well-being.

When I telephoned Gertler and asked him about the gas station and the liquor store that I had noticed, he actually groaned in recognition. "It is the urbanness of cities that makes them attractive," he said. "It's all about high-density and diversity. That's what makes cities so attractive to creative people, and what makes cities so conducive to creativity."

I pondered this. And after I hung up the phone, I did what all wildly creative urban bohemians do when they need to do something truly revolutionary. I walked to the corner and bought a quart of milk.