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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

If we continue to sprawl, it doesn't really matter to me how big it gets. Now, if we could have hit 500,000 or 1 million in the early 1900s... then we'd be something to write home about.

But more Mount Pearl? More Markham? Doesn't make the city feel any bigger to me.

Yes and no. I see what you're saying, in that producing more Mount Pearls and Markhams won't allow the creation of new pre-war-esque urban fabric, but continued sprawl (or other forms of growth) do still have an impact on the central city. It would likely allow Downtown St. John's to hold an even higher population as all those suburban youths flock en masse to the city after high school. With a larger population in the area, more cultural amenities, festivals, and events could be made as there is a larger population to support it. Also, if the City of St. John's ensures Downtown remains an important employment area, more suburbs mean more jobs need to be filled, which could be done through new office buildings downtown.

Toronto wouldn't have the AGO, the Raptors, Bay Street, the Hockey Hall of Fame, a subway system, the CN Tower, or its insane condo boom if there weren't places like Mississauga, Scarborough, Richmond Hill, and Ajax supporting it. These things come to be either through larger regional populations supporting it collectively, or the regional population itself making the city worthy of certain things just by virtue of population presence.

St. John's, today, is a proper city of 40,000 and a North American city of 200,000. That 160,000 difference is completely invisible to me, sprawled outside of Empire Avenue.

Dafuq does that mean? "Proper city"? No, St. John's is a "proper city" (and by that I mean metro area) of 200k, without those suburban regions supporting inner city amenities, the inner city wouldn't have the same amenities and culture it does today. All those kids of George St on the weekend don't all hail from within Empire Avenue, I wouldn't think. Would the Newfoundland government have even bothered with building something like the Rooms if St. John's was a dinky city of 40k (well maybe, if there weren't any larger options)?

The idea that suburban swaths make a city a "North American city" and thus we should separate things between "proper city" and "North American city" negates the fact that pretty much everywhere else in the world sees sprawl, some places even more than us, such as Australia. Maybe we should be equally silly and call St. John's at 200k or Toronto at 6 million the "Australian city" size. You know that that London considers places like Croydon, Pinner, and Romford apart of its "city".