Which city will be next to surpass 1 million people?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Beedok

Thunder Bay's kind of worked, but it still seems like a bit of a work in progress 45 years later.

Hamilton's was a disaster because the suburbs' cost to join has left the city run by rural+suburban interests that kills any efforts to improve the city in the name of the status quo.

Kingston's amalgamation was definitely the biggest success story of all the urban consolidations that took place. 17 years later, most people can barely remember where the old city border even was. Politically inner-city and suburban interests are well balanced (the slightly higher population in the suburbs cancelled out by the more bloc-like voting mentality of the inner city councillors) and we all get along.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

This is true but it was becoming painfully obvious with the passage of time that the old borders were not really working anymore. The City of Gloucester for example. It had the most ridiculous borders imaginable. A blot of rural land in the middle and three random pieces of urban development on the edges. It did not correspond to any meaningful urban development patterns at all really... Yes the borders came about through history and while they made sense in 1970 they make a lot less sense in 2015. We have to keep ties to our history but at the same time we can't be held back by it...

Look at how much of a mess planning was in the end... each little city trying to create their own little kingdom instead of contributing to the region as a whole. (Looking at you, Kanata).

A borough system can provide a balance of local representation with citywide vision. The original goal of Ontario's "regional municipality" system was to do just that, but in Ottawa it never really worked.

I was going to respond this too. I understand lrt's feelings but the old municipal boundaries weren't any better and did not reflect logical historic communities either.

Orleans was a totally viable and established community but did not exist at all and was divided between Gloucester and Cumberland. Even the mall had a municipal boundary running through the middle of it. Depending on where the call was from in the mall it was a different fire department that responded.

Nepean was comprised of a rump appendage of Ottawa's urban form on the one side, and then a cohesive community (Barrhaven) some distance from it that had no municipal status.

Gloucester was the same with a built-up rump right next to Ottawa, and then nothing until you reached Orleans. Then a huge rural arc stretching in an inverted L encircling the eastern and southeastern parts of Ottawa.

Lrt does have a point if he is thinking about communities like Manotick and Stittsville, but their municipal set-ups were not ideal either in the old days.

[niwell]

The biggest issue with Ottawa's municipal boundaries as I see it is the huge amount of rural lands. It's resulted in (for instance) likely the most convoluted property taxation system in Ontario given the disparity in services offered within municipal boundaries. I'm not sure if governance issues are still a problem but I remember when I lived in Ottawa there was a stark rural/suburban/urban divide on votes for any project. On the plus side, a single municipal government has allowed for greater control of land use on the urban fringe.

What would make sense to me is much smaller municipal boundaries for the urban portion of Ottawa, which would contain Orleans, Kanata, Stittsville, Barhaven, Riverside South etc. Basically all of the suburban growth areas and sufficient greenfield land for future expansion. The rural communities would see a two-tier system, although I have no idea what the lower-tiers would be. It may make sense to add them to the surrounding regions.

Finally, a provincial Eastern Ontario Growth Plan similar to what exists for the GGH would be put in place. This would cover municipalities outside of the current municipal boundaries and clearly identify settlement areas where development is permitted.

[Acajack]

Gatineau would have been fine and logical had it been limited to the three central cities with a more or less contiguous urban form: Gatineau, Hull and Aylmer.

But for some reason they went and added Buckingham and Masson-Angers from the far east of the region which are separated from the urban form of the rest of the city by about 10 km of totally rural land.

It would have been much more logical to create a new eastern city with Buckingham-Masson-Angers and the adjacent exurban municipality of L'Ange-Gardien. It would have about 25,000 people.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by Beedok

Chicago's urban area is about 5,500 km2 and 8.6 million (2010), to the GTA's 6,000 km2 and 6 million (2011).

Oh?

*puts foot in mouth*

[GernB]

Originally Posted by Boris2k7

Yeah, when you are used to Calgary, Edmonton proper really doesn't feel like a city of a million. On the other hand, Edmonton actually has a hinterland of sorts, whereas on most of Calgary's sides you drop off into prairie and that's it.

Granted, I haven't been to Edmonton in years, but coming from a city of about ~100,000, Calgary has always just felt like a much larger city than Edmonton.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Oh?

*puts foot in mouth*

It's okay, I thought that Chicago was over bragging until I saw that the CSA adds half of Belgium of land, but only adds like half a million people to the MSA and about a million people to the Urban area.

[urbandreamer]

Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge. Not certain if it counts as a city, but as a region, I expect 1 million will call it home within our lifetime.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I was going to respond this too. I understand lrt's feelings but the old municipal boundaries weren't any better and did not reflect logical historic communities either.

Orleans was a totally viable and established community but did not exist at all and was divided between Gloucester and Cumberland. Even the mall had a municipal boundary running through the middle of it. Depending on where the call was from in the mall it was a different fire department that responded.

Nepean was comprised of a rump appendage of Ottawa's urban form on the one side, and then a cohesive community (Barrhaven) some distance from it that had no municipal status.

Gloucester was the same with a built-up rump right next to Ottawa, and then nothing until you reached Orleans. Then a huge rural arc stretching in an inverted L encircling the eastern and southeastern parts of Ottawa.

Lrt does have a point if he is thinking about communities like Manotick and Stittsville, but their municipal set-ups were not ideal either in the old days.

I am not so much talking about Manotick and Stittsville (which is already a lost cause) as the fact that Ottawa covers too much geographic territory, a large portion of which is rural, making City Hall too remote for a large portion of the population.

The peculiarities of Gloucester and Nepean were entirely creations of the federal Greber Plan while at the very same time the province was allowing a massive annexation. In other words, we had too many levels of government dabbling in the planning of the city, even way back in 1950. That kind of interference continues to this day and could not be solved by amalgamation.

Orleans (and Barrhaven and Kanata) was an artificial creation of Regional government, which turned a rural village into a massive suburb. Yes, it was weird that it was split between Gloucester and Cumberland but the original village was entirely in Gloucester and was entirely destroyed in process. And not so long ago, it did have a semi-autonomous status. It is interesting how that status disappeared exactly at the time when it blew up into a massive suburb.

Perhaps, Regional government did not work that well, and we had each municipality creating kingdoms but we went to the other extreme by centralizing all municipal decision making.

For a city of this size and geographic area, what I am suggesting is some local control of local issues. Things like parks, recreation programs, local street maintenance, etc. I became very jaded when City councillors from distant locations were deciding what was happening in my part of the city and often in opposition to local councillors. I have also reflected on the royal mess the city has made of pretty well every major project in our part of the city. Yes, something finally got done but one project will hobble along for the rest of my life.

I think what I am expressing is very similar to the resistance of West Island communities from being annexed into Montreal with the added complication of Quebec language politics.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's too bad Jean Charest handicapped Montreal for electoral gain in this way. I think the merged Montreal is still a modest success, but it would have been better and more logical to have the whole island as one city.

They actually did merge the whole island into one city. The current layout was a result of referendums held throughout Québec to separate from the central cities. A former municipality needed 50% + 1 of eligible voters to break away. In Gatineau, none of the former municipalities met the threshold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E...on_of_Montreal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E...tion_in_Quebec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec...erendums,_2004

[lio45]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

They actually did merge the whole island into one city. The current layout was a result of referendums held throughout Québec to separate from the central cities. A former municipality needed 50% + 1 of eligible voters to break away. In Gatineau, none of the former municipalities met the threshold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E...on_of_Montreal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E...tion_in_Quebec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec...erendums,_2004

? That's exactly what Acajack said. Montreal was "une île, une ville" only until Charest won a majority provincially raking in the suburban vote dissatisfied by the recent forced mergers with his promise of holding de-merger referendums, happily handicapping Montreal for electoral gain.