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Originally Posted by nito
Kawartha Lakes, Haldimand County and Dufferin counties are sparsely populated rural communities, with no rail and limited road connections to Toronto. Hamilton is a city in its own right, with its own catchment; the journey by car and train is 60-minutes and 75-minutes respectively (and just six trains per day heading to Toronto). Milton, Newmarket and Whitby demonstrate better connectivity as demonstrated by better highway connections and rail capacity. Put in context though that the average commute to Toronto is 34 minutes and Toronto is unquestionably a service-driven economy focused on the primary employment hub of Downtown. Without fast access into the Downtown, the catchment of the city is heavily reduced.
As for my perspective; it is global, hence the earlier references to Tokyo and Manila. There is also little dispute that North American cities are more car-orientated, although outside of many core areas globally, the car and/or other combustion engine vehicles are also the primary means of transport. Cars simply don’t provide an efficient mode of transporting vast numbers that rail provides.
I’ll have to let a Parisian explain the historical urban morphology of their city. London recently surpassed its pre-WW2 population peak a few years ago, but that wasn’t for lack of growth, but two government policies. The Green Belt Act 1938 which stopped sprawl just when the automobile was gaining traction, and the post-war policy of redistributing London’s population into new towns, garden cities and former market-towns. Growth just got redistributed to the surrounding regions, hence the massive commuter flows into London, for example the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway (used by more people than the Lakeshore West, Lakeshore East, Kitchener and Milton lines combined) which runs along the south Essex coast, most of which is post-WW2 development.
In the developed world we inflate the size of our cities far too much.
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Well, I included Haldimand, Kawartha Lakes and Dufferin because by US Census Bureau criteria it seems like they could be considered outlying MSA counties. The commuting ties between the biggest towns of those counties and the suburban GTHA are quite significant, but ultimately it doesn't matter too much whether you include them because the GTHA grows by that amount each year. The GTHA will hit 10 million people within a couple decades whether or not you include them.
I would say that places like Mississauga, Brampton, Markham and Vaughan are an integral part of Toronto at this point, and should be considered part of Toronto's job market when we're talking about whether more outlying bedroom community-esque suburbs have enough commuters working in Toronto to be considered part of its metro area. Much of Mississauga's employment is tied to it being home to Toronto's international airport, Vaughan's large employment zone came about in large part thanks to being home to Toronto's main train yard.
The office parks along the QEW in Burlington that are responsible for the commuting ties between Hamilton and the GTA are a bit more far removed from Toronto, so I'd agree it's less clear cut. But there's plenty of other cities where the boundary between the two historic centers becomes blurred as a result of the connections to the suburbs that sprung up between them (ex DFW). You can try and keep them separate for now, but 20 years from now, when Toronto more seriously approaches the 10 million mark, that could be more difficult. By then, you might see train service get expanded, the Mid-Peninsula highway get built with the section from Hamilton to Milton and Brampton, and Halton Region's population and job centers continuing to boom and increase the connectivity between Hamilton and Toronto's western suburbs.
Sure, I get that London has grown since WWII, but it's not the same as with Toronto. The London Commuter Belt grew what? 11 million to 14.5 million? You can make incremental additions to the transportation network and development patterns from the early 20th century to accommodate that growth without having to restructure the metropolitan area. That's harder to do when your metropolitan area grows from about 1 million to 7-8 million like Toronto did during the same time period when the growth will much more likely be influenced by the new technologies that came about during that time (ie cars).
And although Toronto is a service economy, I still wouldn't underestimate the other sectors. As I see it, what matters is the self-sustaining sectors that interact with and bring in money from the outside world. Where those jobs locate will affect the form of the metropolitan area more, while other sectors like retail and local public services (ex grade schools) just follow the people who follow those jobs. I'd argue construction and real estate is also similar to retail in that it's dependent on the success of other sectors.
Toronto still has close to 10% of it's population employed in manufacturing, and that'll also significantly influence where the jobs in wholesale trade, warehouse and transportation go. Most of that is in the suburbs. And all those jobs will also bring along all those service sector and public sector jobs. Manufacturing actually employs more people in the Toronto area than the Finance and Insurance sector, which I doubt is the case in London.