Three Ontario universities are in talks to create a graduate program in downtown Toronto to teach the next generation of software developers and digital entrepreneurs, part of a broader aim to turn Canada's largest city into another "Silicon Valley."

In a speech yesterday to the Empire Club in Toronto on Thursday, Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy said his school, the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo have agreed to partner on a new digital media program.

The program is part of a larger vision to help the province and the city recover from losses in the manufacturing sector by investing in information technology.

"Our approach is going to be a practical one — where industry, business and government tell us what the economy needs," Levy said Wednesday. "Our goal is to devise made-in-Toronto solutions for i-banking, i-business, i-news, i-industry, i-medicine, and i-everything."

Many schools throughout Canada — including the Banff New Media Institute, the digital animation program of Oakville, Ont.'s Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and Vancouver's Centre for Digital Media — already have curricula devoted to digital media,

What makes Levy's plan distinct is its ambition to go beyond the school and encompass the neighbourhood and region as a whole, all in an effort to kick-start the economy.

"Along with bricks and mortar, there is another kind of city-building," Levy said in his speech. "I want to talk about city-building in terms of the economy — knowledge, wealth creation, and jobs."

To that end, his plan calls for the transformation of the Yonge Street corridor between Gould and Gerrard streets into a hub of high-end digital retail stores.

Last year Ryerson purchased Sam the Record Man's former location at the corner of Yonge and Gould, as well as an adjacent former Future Shop retail outlet.

The Ryerson president had previously sketched out his plan for CBC News in December, but had yet to announce partnerships with other schools.

The joint program could be running within two years, he said.