Statistics Canada Reports II

[MonkeyRonin]

Yep, it's not common, but there certainly are working people who get by with little to no knowledge of English in Canada. I've seen a fair but of it in construction in particular, with many trades basically consisting of one immigrant group with a bilingual GC or foreman to translate as needed.

A lot of my own family members lived in Toronto for decades without ever really learning English; though to Nouvellecosse's point it was more common amongst women who didn't work outside of the house, and would otherwise mostly just socialize or run errands within their community.

[MolsonExport]

a good way to waste some time (world density maps)

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#3/20.00/10.00

[shappy]

^ Nice link - thanks.

We know all this, but such a stark visual contrast between Canadian and US suburban development patterns. In Canada, the boundaries are clearly defined, while US suburbia spreads uniformly into the surrounding hinterland.

Here's an example with Toronto and nearby Great Lakes cities in the US:

[jc_yyc_ca]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

a good way to waste some time (world density maps)

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#3/20.00/10.00

A bad day looking at density maps beats a good day at work

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by shappy

^ Nice link - thanks.

We know all this, but such a stark visual contrast between Canadian and US suburban development patterns. In Canada, the boundaries are clearly defined, while US suburbia spreads uniformly into the surrounding hinterland.

Here's an example with Toronto and nearby Great Lakes cities in the US:

good point. These patterns are readily discernable. Exurbs are much more of a thing in the USA, partly a result of "White Flight", perhaps. Of course, we also have things like greenbelts that help to reign in the worst of low-density sprawl.

[Innsertnamehere]

It's how Canada handles urban growth, parts of the US are similar as well, particularly in the US Southwest.

Strict urban areas and policies limiting rural lot subdivision keep rural areas rural and most of the population in clearly delineated urban spaces. Places like Michigan are much looser on planning regulations and regularly have large rural lots and exurban subdivisions with private services (septic and wells) scattered across rural areas which are generally prohibited in Canada.

[MolsonExport]

With high density comes great public transit. Of course great public transit can be a catalyst for high density.

Detroit and Houston are large urban areas with very low density and awful public transit.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by shappy

We know all this, but such a stark visual contrast between Canadian and US suburban development patterns. In Canada, the boundaries are clearly defined, while US suburbia spreads uniformly into the surrounding hinterland.

The other thing this showed me is just how enormous and concentrated our industrial/employment zones are. The Pearson airport zone, and another one around Vaughan/western North York are so big they show up like two enormous donut holes in the GTA at that level of zoom.

If you pan over to Montreal. there's another gigantic employment zone surrounding YUL that also takes a big chunk out of the density map for that metro. Same thing in southeast and north-by-northeast Calgary, northwest and eastern Edmonton, and western and eastern Winnipeg. Vancouver doesn't have as huge employment zones as those other cities, although they're there if you know where to look.

American warehouse and industrial areas are a lot smaller and more dispersed, and kind of fade into the surrounding low density exurban landscape.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The other thing this showed me is just how enormous and concentrated our industrial/employment zones are. The Pearson airport zone, and another one around Vaughan/western North York are so big they show up like two enormous donut holes in the GTA at that level of zoom.

I've wondered if that concentration around Pearson is one of the biggest single blobs of industrial space like that in the world. China has larger-scale industry but it looks like it has finer-grained worker housing mixed in.

In the Halifax area, Burnside is around 16 square kilometers and has something like 30,000 workers. It must have a significant chunk of the industrial space of the whole region and it's probably bigger than any single industrial park in some much larger American cities. A lot of these are somewhat obscure aerospace and defence operations that do niche things.

It also goes to show what the economy is like in a lot of places. There are the highly visible employers like banks in highrise buildings or heavy industrial sites with big smokestacks, but there are thousands of small businesses in these parks that collectively employ a lot of people. It's possible that the cities with a lot of these small firms are quite economically resilient too, even though they're not as well known.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by shappy

^ Nice link - thanks.

We know all this, but such a stark visual contrast between Canadian and US suburban development patterns. In Canada, the boundaries are clearly defined, while US suburbia spreads uniformly into the surrounding hinterland.

Here's an example with Toronto and nearby Great Lakes cities in the US:

Are you sure comparing a booming city like Toronto, and others in Southern Ontario with rust belt cities with bad urban decay problems (Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) is fair?

I'd rather compare Toronto with the Bay Area, NYC, Houston, etc.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

Are you sure comparing a booming city like Toronto, and others in Southern Ontario with rust belt cities with bad urban decay problems (Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) is fair?

I'd rather compare Toronto with the Bay Area, NYC, Houston, etc.

Pretty sure they're comparing the metro areas rather than the cities which i think is fine. The suburbs of Detroit and other rust belt cities are often just as healthy and prosperous as those elsewhere in the US. Detroit actually has similar (slightly higher) overall urban area density compared to Minneapolis which while Midwest, is not generally considered part of the rest belt and has not experienced high levels of urban decay. And even with non-Midwest cities, Toronto has a denser urban area even than NYC due to the latter's low density suburbs despite NYC having a much higher weighted density. So comparisons with other US metros would look similar except their dense cores would be darker. But dense cores don't tell much about how abruptly the suburbs end at the edge.

[Innsertnamehere]

Toronto basically doesn’t have 1-acre exurban developments and its suburban areas tend to have far smaller lot areas on top of that.

[shappy]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

Are you sure comparing a booming city like Toronto, and others in Southern Ontario with rust belt cities with bad urban decay problems (Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc.) is fair?

I'd rather compare Toronto with the Bay Area, NYC, Houston, etc.

I'm not comparing density per se, just the suburban and exurban development patterns and how, in Toronto's case, the borders are clearly defined while the US examples are not. And that kind of relaxed development seems true for most regions in the US, including the south, east and mid west.

[MolsonExport]

41,691,397 as of August 29, 2025, 1:15 EST. Anyone want to take a guess when we will hit 42 Million?

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005-eng.htm

[isaidso]

June 2026 and just in time for the July 1, 2026 Census data.

[craner]

I’ll say April 2029

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

41,691,397 as of August 29, 2025, 1:15 EST. Anyone want to take a guess when we will hit 42 Million?

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005-eng.htm

End of first quarter 2026
by March 31, 2026

edit: I'll say March 8th, 2026
I don't want to Price is Right crowd out the answer above mine

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

a good way to waste some time (world density maps)

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#3/20.00/10.00

Great site, been having fun looking around on it. Here some of the big/urban cities of North America - all at the same scale:

New York


Los Angeles


Chicago


Toronto


San Francisco


DC-Baltimore


Philadelphia


Montreal


Boston


Vancouver


Mexico City

[MolsonExport]

Fantastic

[Razor]

Hi all..Long time no post!..A bit of lurking from time to time though.

Anyways, I was just doing some random googling over coffee here, and I haven't looked at one of these lists in awhile now. Yes it's one of those Canadian Metro "estimated" rankings lists (2024), and I don't know how accurate this is. Only a few surprises..Toronto, Ottawa Gat , and Kitchener caught me off guard a little bit, because they seem a tad higher than expected considering the Census wasn't all that long ago. If this is accurate, then a party needs to be planned for Winnipeg, as it's approaching a milestone..https://www.citypopulation.de/en/canada/agglo/