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Originally Posted by Jyeatbvg
Can we expect to see an expansion of the city's economic sector in the near future, and to what extent?
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This is kind of a weird way to look at the situation. The population and economy tend to change gradually. The population of Halifax tends to grow by around 1% a year and the economy grows by around 2-3%. Growth in the metro area has gone up a bit in recent years but more significantly, as that chart indicates, there's been a shift in investment from the suburbs to the inner parts of the city. Halifax tends not to be one of those cities that has a boom and bust economy where prospects change very suddenly from year to year.
The housing market in Halifax is very different from China. Prices haven't been increasing much (partly no doubt because there is so much supply available) and I doubt there are a lot of speculative buyers (if there are they aren't profiting much). A lot of the new residential development is rental right now. Most of the buildings are mixed use and some of them are more commercial rather than residential. I would say there is a higher risk of overbuilding in the office market than the residential market.
Planners can determine what types of land uses are permitted in a given area but it is the developers who create the actual proposals and determine which types of uses to focus on based on what they think will sell. Generally speaking in Halifax you can build businesses or residential just about wherever you want; the uses are determined by the market.