Quote:
Originally Posted by IanWatson
Do we want to bring the population to 1 million? Seems to me like Halifax has a pretty good thing going these days as a mid-sized, regional city with steady, moderate growth.
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I kind of agree, but at the same time, how much the city grows, and how fast, is mostly beyond the city's ability to dictate. And the city has been growing very fast lately, with all the consequences for housing, transportation, etc. that come with it. This year might turn out to be different (Nova Scotia's population shrank slightly, as did five other provinces, due to a stall in immigration caused by COVID). But if things get back on track in 2021 or 2022, there's every reason to think the rapid growth will resume.
We're a long way from a million people even at that rapid pace, but still, we've been growing faster than even the most optimistic projections. It makes sense to plan for being a much larger city before we get there. The inadequacy of the Centre Plan is a good example--it aims for 130,000 people in the regional centre by 2030, up from 97,000 in 2016. Given the population growth we've seen in the past five years, and the amount of growth that's happened on and near the peninsula, I'd be surprised if we weren't close to halfway there already, with lots more to come. Yet we have lagging transportation planning and a growth framework (Centre Plan, again) that isn't equipped to deal with those numbers, and will likely result in more housing scarcity and higher prices.
So we may as well plan big. If we don't make it big, nothing lost, and if we do, we'll be ready.
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