Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I like how all the highrises and midrises make it look like a major city.
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What is or isn't a major city is pretty subjective.
One thing I've noticed is that in Canada (with SSP Canada being at an extreme), there is a tendency to think of the N largest cities in the country as major. Calgary got "promoted" to major status sometime around the 1970's-90's. Halifax might or might not be considered major depending on who you talk to, and Saint John got demoted at one point (it was 100% major at Confederation, and borderline by the 1930's). A non-major city may be larger than a major city from 20 years ago.
In 1971 the largest municipality in Canada had 438,000 people. Halifax is going to pass this in the next few months probably.
Back in the 19th century Canadian cities maxed out at 200,000 or so. London had 6.5 million people by 1900 (!). Even the largest Canadian city was tiny in comparison, and the smaller Canadian cities were equivalent to small provincial towns in Europe, and really probably felt small in a bunch of objective ways (not much anonymity, not much large-scale infrastructure, etc.). Today it's no longer like this; Toronto would be a major city in any country and the smaller regional cities in Canada are on par with similar European cities.
(There's also Canadian snobbishness or insecurity, e.g. people from Toronto who go to Montreal or Vancouver and can't stop talking about how small and provincial everything is whereas a Londoner might visit Montreal without making similar comments.)
It seems like this view is not getting adjusted as Canadian cities continue to grow. I doubt Halifax is going to feel much like a small town in 10-20 years in any objective way (e.g. it would take you quite a while to explore the city), but I bet Canadians will still talk about it like that's how it is. And we will of course have people talking about how they are uber cosmopolitan and Shanghai has 30 million people so anything less than 25 million is a stifling village to them.
