The perfect size for your city & metro area ?

[The_Architect]

I could see Toronto being around 10 million (metro), as long as it kept its greenery in the older neighbourhoods and ravines.

Also it would not be able to function with the city's current transit situation. The only way it would work being that big is with some massive transit infrastructure upgrades and expansions. Think all the current LRT plans, but add in the full DRL and some more feeder subway lines. This is in the hypothetical situation that Toronto has the funding for it and a not-dysfunctional council.

[caltrane74]

I also don't see much difference between Toronto and Chicago on the population front, most of the difference is on the skyscraper front, which Toronto seems to be working on but not actually closing in on as we mentioned in a previous thread.

The city of Toronto is actually larger than the city of Chicago's 2.8 million people. I believe we passed them in population last year during the summer, or the year before. The suburban population is just pure dramatics, 10 million CL to 9.1 -9.5 in the GGH. Give me a break.

[harls]

My metro will be perfect size when I can go downtown from a to b, and vice versa... and I won't wait for one goddamn thing.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Assuming that such a list of élite cities exists, I certainly wouldn't put Seattle and Minneapolis in there ahead of Montreal. Or Philadelphia or Dallas or DC or Atlanta...

Not for overall city "oomph" and reputation anyway.

I agree with all of the above, except DC. And maybe Philadelphia. An old city and major city like Philadelphia does a this "oomph" and reputation factor, maybe not to the same extent as Montreal, but it is still predominant.

[north 42]

I would love to see Windsor around the 750,000 range for city proper population, and another 250,000 in Essex County, for a total metro population of around 1 million. I don't want our countryside to be covered in subdivisions, it needs to be kept as precious farmland and natural areas, so I want most of the growth to be in the city. Leamington could be the other city in the region, with around maybe 100,000.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Kingston somehow manages to have a very ethnically diverse restaurant scene, despite the city being almost as white-bred as is physically possible in Ontario.

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Wow, O.K. Is that the norm elsewhere too?

Kingston is a bit of a special case because of the university. Lots of students come from multicultural areas and from overseas, and the professors at the university are worldly too, which creates a big market for ethnic food.

There's some things that are very popular, to the point of 'what the heck, how can this city possibly have this many of them'. Sushi & Southeast Asian (Vietnamese, Thai, etc.) are the two that come to mind.

On the non-food front, this same thing can be said for independent bookstores. There's 3 independent bookstores in downtown Kingston, all going strong, and only 1 chain bookstore in the entire city (a Chapters in the suburbs), the downtown Indigo closed a few years ago. Probably the only case in the country of an independent bookseller driving one of the Chapters-Indigo-Coles monopoly out of business, instead of the other way round.

[eternallyme]

Realistically, doubling sizes of metropolitan areas with no new sprawl or outer development means housing prices would go through the roof...and major out-migration would likely result of both jobs and people (probably to places like northern Ontario, the rural Prairies, etc.).

[MolsonExport]

I'd like another 200K on the existing city footprint. London might actually become somewhat interesting with this. And our real estate prices could stand to rise (incredible value for buyers, still). I basically made almost no equity, factoring in inflation, on my first home that I sold here last year.
But then, I really like my second home, and perhaps could not have afforded it otherwise.

[hipster duck]

I'd say the suburban growth actually makes a major difference. Taking a bus or driving to Toronto from Hamilton it usually felt like endless sfh sprawl. Today with all the new towers either built or being built it feels like an actual city for the entirety of Toronto proper and a good chunk of Mississuaga. It might not seem to make a big difference downtown, but to anyone visiting the city by land it makes a serious difference.

I agree that some cities can feel very big in a car, but that should really be secondary - and I mean really secondary - to the experience one gets as a pedestrian walking around on the street.

Some American cities feel very big when you drive through them in a car, particularly because they have 10 lane elevated freeways, giant advertisements and because the corporate, pomo skyline is always somewhere in view. As soon as you get off the interstate, though, you realize the landscape of Carl's Jrs and muffler repair shops behind chain link fences is exactly the same as what you saw 25 miles ago, except its older and rattier now.

Toronto feels big in the suburbs, but at least when you get off the Gardiner and drive up Spadina you feel like "wow, this is a big city". 15 years ago, the drive into town was still impressive, but the drive up Spadina would have revealed a lot of parking lots and half empty storefronts, and maybe half the volume of pedestrians.

[Xelebes]

Edmonton - 2-3 x so 1.7 to 2.6 million
Metro - 3-4x beyond so 2.8 to 4.1 million

[MolsonExport]

Some American cities feel very big when you drive through them in a car, particularly because they have 10 lane elevated freeways, giant advertisements and because the corporate, pomo skyline is always somewhere in view. As soon as you get off the interstate, though, you realize the landscape of Carl's Jrs and muffler repair shops behind chain link fences is exactly the same as what you saw 25 miles ago, except its older and rattier now.

Quoted for truth and elegance.

[KnoxfordGuy]

Fredericton is at 60,000 with a CA of almost 100,00. Having it the size of Halifax would be nice, about 400,000. But our downtown has a height restriction of around 9 floors because of the height of city hall or the legislature, one or the other. Though there is pretty good infill happening downtown, we are starting to sprawl pretty bad at the top of the hill on the south side of the city, which should be slowed.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Realistically, doubling sizes of metropolitan areas with no new sprawl or outer development means housing prices would go through the roof...and major out-migration would likely result of both jobs and people (probably to places like northern Ontario, the rural Prairies, etc.).

Not having sprawl doesn't mean not having any new development, it just means having reasonably dense, non-car dependent development. Not sure where the idea came from that the only options for growth are infill or low density sprawl...

Originally Posted by someone123

One of the challenges in Halifax is that its small size makes building infrastructure like an LRT system more difficult, so the transit options are more limited than they would be in a larger city. I think Halifax would be less car-oriented if it were larger, and that there would be more of a critical mass of people living without cars who would support things like urban format rather than suburban retail. A lot of the suburban qualities are a direct result of the small size.

I don't think the city would lose all of its character and suddenly become a giant suburb even if it were to start growing a lot faster today; it would end up being a lot more interesting, just like it's much better today than it was in, say, 1995. As an aside, if it had grown to be much larger prior to about 1930 or so it definitely would have ended up being more interesting. As far back as the 1890s there were proposals in Halifax (and Saint John) to build things like underground streetcar lines similar to what was built in Boston. Neither city ended up growing much during those periods so the ambitious projects never materialized (both cities were once very ambitious and advanced for their time). If they had grown to be 3 or 4 times larger some of those things probably would have happened though.

Sounds convincing but I'm not so sure it's actually true. You see some pretty big cities that are very car oriented and some smaller places less so. In fact, the metro modal split between transit+active transportation vs cars is actively higher in Greater Halifax than it is in many larger NA metro areas. Remember the modal shares thread posted by J.Will last year that shows the breakdown of modal share across a variety of NA metro areas?





Even if we look at a place like Boston, the overall metro area has poorer modal split numbers than greater Halifax. Not just because we have more walking, but because of a higher share of transit usage too. So despite Boston's apparent advancement in the domain of public transit (12 commuter rail, 4 rapid transit, 5 light rail, and 4 trolleybus lines) and despite their critical mass, we've managed to achieve higher numbers at our much smaller size.

Now is it possible that with more growth we could maintain our situation or make it even better? Sure. But we simply haven't proven ourselves willing or capable of doing that. We've mainly benefited from inheriting our dense, historic center, while on the peripheries our development pattern is cow dung.

[Drybrain]

I'm actually surprised by Halifax's decent transit numbers in that chart--it goes a way to prove what I've been feeling in the past year about the city's transit system. It's not great, nor even very good, but it's not the disaster some people make it out to be. It's reasonably effective at getting around the city centre and the first ring of suburbia, though figuring out the pattern of the routes, which tend to meander all over the place, is annoying and doesn't lend itself to just hopping on a bus that's going in your direction, as is the case in some cities. (Sunday service is also awful.)

It's also really surprising that our transit numbers are basically on par with Calgary, which has such a successful LRT system and is widely regarded as an incredible transit success story for such a car-dependent city.

The high numbers for active transport and relatively high numbers for transit make Halifax looks less car culture-y than it sometimes seems.

Unrelated, the pitiful American transit numbers are interesting. San Francisco below Toronto? And so many cities in the single digits. I wonder if, not to be glib, this is related to public transit in the U.S. being seen as more of a "loser cruiser" option.

[MolsonExport]

Those Dallas, Detroit, etc. figures for public transit % are an embarrassment given the relative size of these cities.

Show me a decent-sized city with high transit numbers, and I will (almost always) show you a downtown with a worthy urban fabric. And vice-versa

[SignalHillHiker]

I'm not surprised we're so low. Transit here is still awful (it literally is faster for me to walk to the Avalon Mall than to take a bus there from my house - 40 minutes versus 45) AND there's still a stigma. It's something you do if you can't afford it. Being seen standing at a bus stop is like being seen walking into an abortion clinic. I'm joking, of course, but barely.

It's pathetic here, in that regard.

[csbvan]

Wow Victoria's bike rate is huge. In general, Victoria's numbers are quite impressive for a city its size. I am surprised.

[CanadianCentaur]

My ideal size for Edmonton - about 1.5-2.5 million in the city proper, and about 2.5-3.5 million metro.

Even if Edmonton does not make any future annexations (I consider this highly unlikely, even though it hasn't annexed any land since 1982), you could fit as much as over 2-2.5 million within its current boundaries.

The city of Toronto proper covers an area of 630 sq km - 92% that of the city of Edmonton proper's, which is about 684 sq km. Yet, as Canada's largest city proper, TO has over 2.6 million, compared to Edmonton's 878,000.

And now, speaking of public transit usage rates...

I'm a little surprised that Edmonton is ranked as low as it is. I thought it'd be closer to Winnipeg. Edmonton has LRT, Winnipeg doesn't.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Those Dallas, Detroit, etc. figures for public transit % are an embarrassment given the relative size of these cities.

Show me a decent-sized city with high transit numbers, and I will (almost always) show you a downtown with a worthy urban fabric. And vice-versa

Even worse is that some suburbs of these US cities may have very little or even none at all in the way of public transit. Take Arlington, a city of 375,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, for example. Arlington, TX is the largest US city without any form of public transit.. That's the size of what Surrey, BC was in the early 2000s.

[Dwils01]

For Sault Ste Marie I would like a city size of about 120,000 and a metro area of about 150,000.

[Innsertnamehere]

Northern Ontario in general would benefit from a larger population. Sudbury at 300,000, North bay at 150,000, and Sault Ste Marie at 150,000 would be nice. It would push road demand up that the twinning of highway 17 might actually be justified.

Unfortunately those cities are stagnating at roughly half those numbers.