Maps are tiny, hard to see. Montreal has a weird shape. It's not Ville-Marie or anything Google call "Downtown".

Vancouver boundaries looks ok (Downtown+West End) but numbers don't match. I left Stanley Park out and they have a tract inside West End, but not enough to explain the difference: 112k vs 121k.

I have Toronto done. I'll post it later. I checked on my one drive and it's a perfect match: 275,931. StatCan and I had to make a compromise though due the tracts shape: a piece of Summerhill is considered downtown. The Annex and Yorkville were considered Downtown by us, but not by Google Maps: the northern border ends at Bloor Street.

Ville-Marie is arguably more sensible than the Statistics Canada definition.

It's always better to stick with official jurisdiction when it's possible. I brought small versions of "Downtown" to keep consistency of my initial idea of the thread.

I had in mind places like Manhattan's Financial District and Chicago's Loop, that has always been full of offices and had virtually no one living there and welcomed tens of thousands of residents in this century. The phenomenon is broader though and even with larger definitions of Downtowns we can see a fast growth. Heck, even city propers started to grow faster than their suburbs for the first time ever.

Anyway, for Montreal I decided to use what Google called Downtown/Centre-Ville for the strict definition and I assume that's Montreal's financial district. Very health growth 10k to 25k in this century, mirroring NY and Chicago.

For Toronto, the Financial District takes only one tract (CT 0014) and it's tiny: only 0.4727 km². But they also experienced strong growth there: from 515 (2001) to 2,382 (2021).

Downtown Toronto

------------------------------ 2021 ------ 2011 ------ 2001 ------ Growth ------ Density

Downtown ------------------- 275,931 ---- 177,446 ----- (?) ------- 55.5% ----- (?) ----- 16.7 km² --- 16,523 inh./km²

Old Toronto ----------------- 841,236 ---- 730,656 ---- 612,925 ----- 15.1% -- 19.2% ----- 97.1 km² ---- 8,664 inh./km²

Toronto ------------------- 2,794,356 -- 2,615,060 -- 2,481,494 ------ 6.9% --- 5.4% ---- 630 km² ------- 4,435 inh./km²

Toronto CMA -------------- 6,202,225 -- 5,583,064 -- 4,682,897 ----- 11.1% -- 19.2% -- 5,906 km²

Toronto Metro Area* ------ 7,568,308 -- 6,801,391 -- 5,758,940 ----- 11.3% -- 18.1% -- 8,775 km²

* Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa and Guelph CMAs

Explosive growth on Downtown Toronto even though they already had a quite high density back in 2011. Unfortunately lots of tracts were split and I didn't find data for 2001.

Later I'll sort out tracts to get this inverted "T" shape to exclude the traditional residential/horizontal areas in northeast and northwest sections of Downtown.

To get more of a "proper" downtown definition for Toronto I'd probably have the western border shift from Bathurst to University Ave/Queen's Park once north of Queen and probably Jarvis on the east. Northern border at Davenport Rd.

It's safe to say around 300,000 live in downtown Toronto. People can argue all day about what they think the boundaries should be