[halifaxboyns]

Calgary is much bigger, but has a council of 14.
I've gotten to know a few of the Alderman and many of them wish their wards could be broken up so they had less area to cover - because the problems in each community are so different sometimes.

For many of the inner city alderman though, their wards are almost carbon copies with regards to issues (usually related to inner city redevelopment, crime, land value and parking).

I could see HRM needing this many councillor's if it were a population of say 850,000 - since it's reasonable to assume that the city would become more spread out (since only 25% of any population increase is planned to be absorbed into the existing urban area - according to the the HRM regional plan) - so greenfield burb growth would be enormous. But for a region like this, you could easily combine some of the more rural areas together into 'super districts' and then reduce council that way. Or even downtown and South end could be combined...?