[Acajack]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

It should be emphasized that Toronto and Chicago have very similar metropolitan populations.

When they say Chicago has a metro population of 10m, it's using the American definition of metropolitan area which is much more generous than StatCan's CMA concept. If we applied the US CSA definitions to Canada, then Toronto's metro would include Hamilton, Barrie, and K-W for a population of about 9m or so. Similarly if we applied StatCan's more restrictive CMA definition to the US, Chicago would be about 7m or so.

Apples-to-apples, Toronto and Chicago have about the same population--Toronto being behind by a few hundred thousand people. Meaning of course that in 10-20 years time Toronto will pull ahead as Toronto is growing faster.

Its interesting that applying city proper definitions exaggerates the size of Canadian cities relative to US ones, while apply metropolitan definitions using each country's criteria does exactly the opposite.

I once had fun with Eastern Ontario's numbers and found that by the US CSA definition, Ottawa's 'metro' would include Hawkesbury, Lancaster, and Ganonoque, all of which are very distant from the city and nowhere near close to being reasonably considered metropolitan Ottawa.

If Ottawa-Gatineau were an American metro it would likely be pushing 2 million. Or already there even.