Winnipeg or Québec - 1 Million

[harls]

Who do you think will reach the one million mark first? and why?

[Truenorth00]

Probably Winnipeg. It's been growing faster. But I'm rooting for Quebec City!

[J.OT13]

Winnipeg. Why? Some people might not like this, but Quebec's hardened language laws and questionable secular bill will slow down immigration, both international and domestic.

[thurmas]

Winnipeg has been growing by about 1% a year where as QC is at 0.72 a year. Also Winnipeg attracts 62% of the 33,000 new arrivals to Manitoba. Quebec with their language laws and immigration quotas and Montreal being the preferred location for most newcomers dilutes Quebecs chances.

[MonctonRad]

Winnipeg - the city is much more open, welcoming and inclusive and much less ethnocentric than QC. Winnipeg also doesn't have to worry about overly restrictive and suffocating linguistic restrictions.

QC is a wonderful city BTW. I like it a lot. It is just an outlier in the North American context, and is hamstrung by an ethnocentric provincial government.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Winnipeg. Why? Some people might not like this, but Quebec's hardened language laws and questionable secular bill will slow down immigration, both international and domestic.

If an immigrant is considering living in Quebe city, langage laws are irrelevant, since the city is 100% francophone. It’s la CAQ immigration policies that limit the number of immigrants to the province, which could easily find ten of thousands more immigrants willing to come here if they would open the gate, language laws or not.

[harls]

I'm rooting for Winnipeg too (MB homer living in QC) but Québec City is no slouch. I think they will be very close when it comes to the million mark.

[WhipperSnapper]

I think we may be underestimating the attractiveness of the hardened language laws for the non woke French (pffft! two genders) language. There's alot of French speakers on this smooshed ball open to a move. It's not very likely Winnipeg is going to steal more away from the Asian immigration juggernaut or is it currently on the radar for future Toronto expats.

On a serious note, i don't care. I'm more interested in Acajack's interest in this thread. Apparently, I'm too early.

[harls]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

I'm more interested in Acajack's interest in this thread. Apparently, I'm too early.

Where is he? Has he been succumbed by the smoke?

[urbandreamer]

I'm going with Winnipeg because it has more affordable grey stucco shit boxes sprouting all around the outskirts, immigrants from the Philippines, India and Ukraine. I'd prefer QC to grow in the future, when this grey aesthetic is no longer in fashion.

Although not considered one city, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge could easily beat both cities to 1 million in Waterloo Region.

[harls]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Although not considered one city, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge could easily beat both cities to 1 million in Waterloo Region.

Yeah that is just Outer Toronto. Not included.

[ericmacm]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Although not considered one city, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge could easily beat both cities to 1 million in Waterloo Region.

I think as far as KWC is concerned, it is growing fast but there is still too much ground to make up. Now, if Guelph started being counted as part of it (I have a suspicion that the Quad-Cities/RM of Grand River/KWCG isn’t too far away once HWY 7 is constructed and more transit connections are made between the two), it would still be smaller than Hamilton (based on 2021 data at least) but there would be less ground to cover.

Winnipeg is the obvious choice as the first to 1M for all above-noted reasons. I suspect Quebec City will start to grow faster once the LRT is built out, but I don’t think it can outpace Winnipeg fast enough.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Although not considered one city, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge could easily beat both cities to 1 million in Waterloo Region.

Disagree. Tech industry in the last 6-8 months laid off thousand plus jobs affecting K-W. That's going to temper growth rates a bit.
In 2021 the CMA was 575k, Waterloo region was 587k

A bit of a catch-up game to Winnipeg ~835k and Québec 839k

[thewave46]

In the context of winning an arbitrary race to 1 million, yeah, edge to Winnipeg.

In the context of the city being a 'great city' as in what the locals want, not so sure there. In the SSP fashion, statistics are the easy points to argue.

So, if we're doing the statistics game, sure, one can make a case for Winnipeg. Here ya go:
NHL teams: Winnipeg = 1, Quebec City = 0.
There it is, folks, statistically proven. Winnipeg>Quebec City.

In the more arbitrary sense, is Winnipeg leveraging the growth it is getting to make a better city for its inhabitants? Or is Quebec doing a better job there, despite lower growth? Is growth unto itself what makes a city great? Is Phoenix, AZ a great city because of its rapid growth?

Greatness - to myself, at least - seems to be a measure of the holistic nature of a city. Does it feel like a place like has a centre, a direction, the infrastructure to make that happen, and the willingness to invest for the future? History is harder to pin down, but longer-lived cities have an edge there that younger ones don't.

So, in the sense of Quebec City, I get more the sense of a city trying more for the goal of greatness versus just growth. It's the depth of the planning for transit, the preservation of its centre, how its culture is steeped into it, the undeniable advantage of the long history of place. It has a sense of who it is, what it wants to be, and is trying to get there.

Alas, Winnipeg doesn't give that same vibe. It's been a long while since I've been, but the current state of affairs more portends a 'growth with less vision to greatness' angle. It has potential, but that potential seems unrealized. There's fits and spurts, but never a sustained momentum. Which is a shame, because mid-sized Canadian cities always did pretty well at the infrastructure bit - Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa had transit systems befitting cities of their stature as they grew to cities of a million. Sure, the former had the oil boom and the latter being the national capital, but I think Winnipeg could be something if it wanted to be.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by thewave46

In the context of winning an arbitrary race to 1 million, yeah, edge to Winnipeg.

In the context of the city being a 'great city' as in what the locals want, not so sure there. In the SSP fashion, statistics are the easy points to argue.

So, if we're doing the statistics game, sure, one can make a case for Winnipeg. Here ya go:
NHL teams: Winnipeg = 1, Quebec City = 0.
There it is, folks, statistically proven. Winnipeg>Quebec City.

In the more arbitrary sense, is Winnipeg leveraging the growth it is getting to make a better city for its inhabitants? Or is Quebec doing a better job there, despite lower growth? Is growth unto itself what makes a city great? Is Phoenix, AZ a great city because of its rapid growth?

Greatness - to myself, at least - seems to be a measure of the holistic nature of a city. Does it feel like a place like has a centre, a direction, the infrastructure to make that happen, and the willingness to invest for the future? History is harder to pin down, but longer-lived cities have an edge there that younger ones don't.

So, in the sense of Quebec City, I get more the sense of a city trying more for the goal of greatness versus just growth. It's the depth of the planning for transit, the preservation of its centre, how its culture is steeped into it, the undeniable advantage of the long history of place. It has a sense of who it is, what it wants to be, and is trying to get there.

Alas, Winnipeg doesn't give that same vibe. It's been a long while since I've been, but the current state of affairs more portends a 'growth with less vision to greatness' angle. It has potential, but that potential seems unrealized. There's fits and spurts, but never a sustained momentum. Which is a shame, because mid-sized Canadian cities always did pretty well at the infrastructure bit - Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa had transit systems befitting cities of their stature as they grew to cities of a million. Sure, the former had the oil boom and the latter being the national capital, but I think Winnipeg could be something if it wanted to be.

Yes those are excellent points. Greatness is something many people have a strong intuitive sense of, but they have difficulty identifying its specific elements. And people who can provide a specific set of criteria for it are unlikely to agree with the criteria chosen by others.

And I agree that growth definitely doesn't guarantee it. Growth is sort of like money in that it's hard to build a great city without any, but cities with it can invest it wisely and use it to build something amazing... or completely squander it.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

I'm going with Winnipeg because it has more affordable grey stucco shit boxes sprouting all around the outskirts, immigrants from the Philippines, India and Ukraine. I'd prefer QC to grow in the future, when this grey aesthetic is no longer in fashion.

Although not considered one city, Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge could easily beat both cities to 1 million in Waterloo Region.

Highly unlikely.

Winnipeg has over 250,000 more people in it's metro area, and only needs 100,000 more people to reach the finish line. K-W may eventually catch Winnipeg, but I cannot see that happening in the next 25 years.

[esquire]

Winnipeg at a million would have been hard to imagine 25 years ago. Yet here we are on the cusp of it. You wouldn't really know it from the infrastructure decisions that get made here though, ha.

Winnipeg is a landing pad for people from abroad and rural/northern locales in the region. I don't get the impression that there is a ton of natural population growth and as we know, Winnipeg is not the most popular destination for interprovincial migrants.

However, I don't have a grasp on what is driving population growth in Quebec City. Where are people moving there from?

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by esquire

I don't have a grasp on what is driving population growth in Quebec City. Where are people moving there from?

Incoming civil servants from around the province. Students going to Laval. Economic refugees from the Saguenay, Bas St-Laurent & Gaspe.

[harls]

Originally Posted by esquire

Winnipeg at a million would have been hard to imagine 25 years ago.

Winnipeg used to be 580,000 for many years throughout my youth and collecting provincial highway maps.

[Winnipegger]

I'm going to have to vote for Winnipeg for obvious reasons, but a quick look at the components of growth and Winnipeg has a strong advantage over Quebec for international migration (16,000/yr versus 6,000/yr for Quebec), but a massive disadvantage over inter-provincial migration (-7,000/yr versus ~0 for Quebec).

Winnipeg has much larger population growth AND population loss compared to Quebec, so it's difficult to say if the large population influx into Winnipeg will continue to be significantly larger than the population outflux over the long term. I get the sense that the more people that move to Winnipeg, the higher the outmigration rate several years later due to it being a "landing pad" for immigrants, poor state of infrastructure, or dissatisfaction with the weather.

While Winnipeg's own population projection puts the population at exceeding 1 million 25 years from now, it's difficult to say if Winnipeg's "big numbers in, big numbers out" growth will be make it the winner over Quebec's "slow and steady" growth.