Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
Lots of questions in there, I'll try to answer them the best I can.
Vancouver has long had a much larger Chinese presence, the city is sort of a play place for the children of China's wealthy. Its seen as largely utopian in China from my understanding, with the clean air, beautiful mountains, etc. Given its on the Pacific coast of the continent, its also closer to China than Toronto, and has historically always had a large Chinese-Canadian population. What has caused a bit of a slowdown is a recent introduction of a foreign property buyers tax, which places a 15% tax on property buyers who are not Canadian residents. Chinese purchases in Vancouver existed, but they were not a dominant force in the market as many suspected, probably around 5% of the market. (Toronto's is estimated to be around 2%). What this new tax however has done is place a "shock" in the market, as 5% of the market has disappeared. the other 95% is now sitting around scared waiting to see what the market will do, and it has in effect cooled the market.
Toronto has not had this tax put in place, so it continues unabated like normal.
Toronto has added 100,000 people to its metro area every year for the past 40 years or so. Today it is a city of 6.2 million people, but at the turn of the century it was around 4.5 million. The city grows at a pace similar to that of the fastest growing american cities such as Houston or Dallas. The place is at a breakneck speed, and has planning policies encouraging intensification instead of suburban sprawl (which is what it mostly did in the 1980's and 1990's). This means skyscrapers galore, and the city tends to be less beholden to the market like american cities. Skyscrapers in the US are largely "luxury" goods for wealthy companies and people - less so in Toronto, where they are for the cities middle class. This puts a lot more pressure on growth, and in turn means they tend to get built at a relatively half decent speed regardless of the economy.
As for Montreal, It was indeed once Canada's main city. Toronto has been growing faster than it for almost a century now, and took the #1 spot in the 1970's as the big Canadian banks moved to Toronto due to separatism fears that were peaking at the time. Toronto has been the biggest city in the country for the last 40 years, but its only really the last 15 or so that it has really started to culturally dominate Montreal. The gap in population is now significant, with Toronto being over 50% bigger. That gap means that the two cities have largely "accepted" their positions I guess, with no real significant conflict. Toronto is Canada's dominant city, and that is sort of the way it is.. If anything there is more conflict between Vancouver and Toronto.
Montreal is also growing at a half decent pace, just not quite as much as Toronto. Montreal grows by about 40,000 people annually. They have quite a few skyscrapers under construction too, but they have a height limit downtown so they aren't as tall.
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Great & thoughtful answers. Thanks! Regarding Montreal, don't they have a (silly) law that forbids skyscrapers from being higher than the summit of Mont Royal? I vaguely remember reading that somewhere. If I were Montreal, I'd love to put up a few 300 meter towers to compete with Toronto.
Also, in Toronto, I notice that the tallest buildings stop at about 300 meters, just shy of "supertall" status. Is there some kind of law preventing, say, a 350 or 400 meter skyscraper? In. L.A. & S.F., supertalls have been allowed by "buying" and transferring development rights from adjacent parcels. For example, the supertall Library Tower (U.S. bank) bought height rights from the L.A. Main Library across the street (funding reconstruction of the library), allowing the tower to go higher.
Is there a homeless problem in Canada, specifically Toronto? Would be brutal to be homeless in the winter. Homeless are now all over California cities, perhaps because of the mild weather. It looks like the shantytown/"Hooverville" Great Depression years in L.A., S.F. and San Diego, and the crisis is getting worse by the day. The price of housing is so high, that many people are driven to homelessness. If you are homeless, I guess the place to be so is California, Florida or Hawaii. I wish California cities could be more decent to the poor & develop more low cost housing. Even safe parking places & campgrounds would be better than what we have now. Sad. Maybe cities are afraid the "kinder" they are, the more homeless will come from other places, maybe even Canada? It wouldn't shock me if cold weather cities are "dumping" their homeless on California and other warm places. Or maybe the homeless are just self relocating. In any case, the problem is terrible, and getting worse. Just the other day, in San Diego, a lady foung a homeless woman sleeping outside her door. She woke the woman, telling her to please move on, and was attacked. The homeless woman hit her and pulled out some of her hair. A real crisis.
Finally, does Canada have many "illegal" or non-authorized immigrants like the U.S. does? Is it an issue there? How are "illegal" immigrants dealt with? Are they allowed to stay in Canada?
Thanks!