Canada's 30 Largest UAs on One Page

middeljohn · #1 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 7:56 PM**

I was curious to see how the various cities stack up to one another in terms of how much space they take up. So I took screen shots from Google Satellite, converted them to all the same scale, and put the urban areas all on one page. Here is what it looks like.

EDIT: Re-uploaded with the scale as well.

I am not 100% familiar with all the cities, but I tried to get all of the urban area in, including satellite cities if they were within reasonable distance, 20km or less.

Full size: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2843/1...af65a7d1_o.png

Chadillaccc · #2 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:02 PM**

That graphic uses outdated borders for the city of Calgary, probably pre-2006. Even the urban area now is significantly larger. Very cool graphic though.

Edit: Ohhh, I see you made this yourself. Sorry for nitpicking. Disregard my above comment. Very good job regardless!

Aylmer · #3 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:03 PM**

Ottawa's is a bit misleading: a good deal of the space shown is greenspace, especially around Aylmer, Kanata and Orleans.

Really cool to compare the size, though!

SignalHillHiker · #4 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:23 PM**

Awesome, middeljohn. Thanks for making and sharing!

Fascinating to see the ones with bedroom communities joined by highways.

middeljohn · #5 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:28 PM**

Yeah the borders aren't perfect for all the cities. I didn't bother taking out tiny greenspaces surrounded by urban areas, and the BC cities especially were kind of annoying to isolate cause a lot of the surrounding terrain is a similar colour when zoomed out. I think it's fairly accurate for the most part though.

What I wanted to do was put them all together into one giant connurbation and call it Canadropolis, but I remembered that I actually have a life to attend to. Also, it's probably something better off done in photoshop instead of paint, and I don't have photoshop, haha.

It's interesting how the shape of cities grew as a result of the freeways, or in the case London and Winnipeg, the lack of urban freeways.

Innsertnamehere · #6 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:32 PM**

Could you do one with Oshawa, Hamilton, and Toronto together? they are essentially one giant urban area.

drto · #7 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:32 PM**

Very cool! Thank you for taking the time to do this and post it!

Cyro · #8 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:34 PM**

Nice job, great work..

Here we go now..
"Wait we're bigger than that"..It's not accurate for _________, we're much bigger/larger...
It's interesting to see who posts first and complains...very telling..

Kingston looks cute, like a little mouse..

SignalHillHiker · #9 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:40 PM**

With a little more local knowledge, this is the mess you can get for St. John's, middeljohn:

This is basically all of the urban areas in the St. John's CMA. I accidentally cut out a few built-up areas, but likewise couldn't get rid of all the green space - so it evens out.

The massive white section in the centre of the city is Pippy Park. It's not just wilderness, there are campgrounds, a fluvarium, etc. But I still whited it out.

To the southwest is Conception Bay South, and in the centre are Paradise, and Mount Pearl, etc.

To the east is St. John's, Goulds, Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove, etc.

To the north is Torbay, Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove, Flatrock, etc.

I didn't include Wabana since it's on an island off the coast.

EDIT: Just read Cyro's post above and wanted to clarify: what you had is right, and includes just about anywhere that looks urban. The rest are, at best, subdivisions a few streets deep. Just crunched the numbers and what you circled accounts for 85% of the CMA's population, so look at all I added, and that only adds the last 15% of the people.

middeljohn · #10 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:55 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Could you do one with Oshawa, Hamilton, and Toronto together? they are essentially one giant urban area.

Yeah I know, it's what I keep telling the yanks in the City Discussions forum. I separated them though because I wanted to see how Hamilton compares to QC and Winnipeg, and how Oshawa compares to Halifax and Niagara. You could also (almost) argue that Abbotsford is part of Vancouver, but I decided to isolate each one based Statscan's CMA definitions. Maybe I'll redo this over the weekend I'll see. For now people can just put them together using their imagination

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyro

Kingston looks cute, like a little mouse..

I thought Vancouver looks kind of like poultry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

With a little more local knowledge, this is the mess you can get for St. John's, middeljohn:

This is basically all of the urban areas in the St. John's CMA. I accidentally cut out a few built-up areas, but likewise couldn't get rid of all the green space - so it evens out.

The massive white section in the centre of the city is Pippy Park. It's not just wilderness, there are campgrounds, a fluvarium, etc. But I still whited it out.

To the southwest is Conception Bay South, and in the centre are Paradise, and Mount Pearl, etc.

To the east is St. John's, Goulds, Petty Harbour-Maddox Cove, etc.

To the north is Torbay, Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove, Flatrock, etc.

I didn't include Wabana since it's on an island off the coast.

St John's was difficult to do since all the communities are really spread out, I'm assuming due to geographical constraints, yet are still connected by thin urban strips. Thanks for showing what it should be.

middeljohn · #11 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 8:57 PM**

I also found it interesting how much greyer the prairie cities are due to the lack of vegetation. A lot.of interesting things can be observed putting all the cities next to each other that you may not have noticed otherwise.

Chadillaccc · #12 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:00 PM**

It is cool. also of note, look how deep green Vancouver and Victoria are!

GreaterMontréal · #13 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:00 PM**

What is the difinition of urban ? couples are missing for Mtl.

SignalHillHiker · #14 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:02 PM**

Sherbrooke and Trois Rivieres remind me of those deepsea angler fish.

middeljohn · #15 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:03 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

What is the difinition of urban ?

Urban = Built up = significantly large gray section

If a bedroom community or satellite city has greenspace between it and the rest of the urba area, I limited it to 20km.

Those are the definitions I used. Not perfect, and little 1,000 people communities have probably gone missing, but I think this diagram gives the general gist for all the cities.

SignalHillHiker · #16 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:08 PM**

Edmonton and Calgary, the way you've placed them, look like they're dancing together.

DrNest · #17 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:10 PM**

Good work Middlejohn. A useful way of getting a rough comparison of size. Thanks for sharing.

ue · #18 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:11 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Edmonton and Calgary, the way you've placed them, look like they're dancing together.

Awesome.

GreaterMontréal · #19 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:13 PM**

Quote:

If a bedroom community or satellite city has greenspace between it and the rest of the urba area, I limited it to 20km.

Ok, thanks. You can see, there is a green belt in Laval lol .

LeftCoaster · #20 Posted **Jan 31, 2014, 9:13 PM**

Awesome work, thanks for all the effort that must have taken!

Toronto is an utter behemoth, but otherwise I'm quite surprised at how similar in size Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal all are. Edmonton's urban area in particular is simply massive for a city its size, definitely a product of it's huge industrial activity.