Statistics Canada Reports II

[rdaner]

Though hit very hard in 80-90s, Brantford has made great strides and is infinitely better than many assume. The creation of the Laurier Campus downtown marked the start of recovery and the residential population has increased as have new housing.

[trueviking]

I’m in shock that in 2020 cities still did that.

What is that big glass box in Brantford?

[bolognium]

Fifteen years later and photos of Brantford before it nuked its downtown are still hard to look at. The buildings on that side of Colborne Street were built on a slope, and some of them were quite tall and elaborate at the rear. There was a canal at the bottom of the hill that ran parallel to Colborne Street. These buildings in Brantford had a similar built form to what you'd see at the backs of buildings on St. Paul Street in St. Catharines (shoutout St. Paul you're a great mainstreet!).

If anyone's interested in browsing some very thorough documentation of the Brantford strip before demolition, check out these two blog posts by R. Bobak on the blog Right In Niagara.

Blog featuring the storefronts along Colborne St. in Brantford

Blog featuring the rear portions of the block

Here are just a handful of photos from R. Bobak that show the scale of the demotion. This truly is just a handful, look at the blogs to see a full tour of the front and back of these buildings before demolition. Virtually everything you see in these photos is now long gone:























*all images by R. Bobak, blog Right In Niagara*

[craner]

Originally Posted by bartolo

Is it an Ontario thing only to not include basements in ft2 of a house. I am looking for a house in BC and if they have a finished basement they are including it in the ft2. Coming from Ontario I have never see a basement being included.

Alberta doesn’t include basement sq.ft. - finished or unfinished although it’s usually noted f finished.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

So we're to believe that the less developed countries of the world, aka the global south, will be equally wealthy and stable as affluent countries within just a couple of decades? And that countries with extremely high population densities will lose so much population that they'll have as many resources per person as a place like Canada? Unless there's good reason to make both assumptions, there will still be plenty of people wanting to emigrate to other places.

Remember, the population crash doesn't mean populations will drop suddenly. It just means they'll stagnate (stop growing) or shrink slowly over time which is what we've seen in Japan where they've been losing population for about 15 years and have only dropped by less than a percent per decade. But when there are less affluent countries with over a billion people and others in the hundreds of millions that still leaves huge numbers of people seeking better opportunities. And that's just talking normal immigrants without considering all the refugees who will be seeking asylum from various conflict and upheavals which we can expect to happen. The idea that there won't be people migrating to affluent countries within a couple of decades verges on pure fantasy.

There will always be some migration but:

1) Totalitarian states like China facing their own population catastrophes will likely make emigration much more difficult.

2) The difference between the reasonably affluent places of the Global South and the West will get smaller. Russian emigration went way down as the country's economy stabilized in the 00s and 10s (and went up again after the Ukraine war).

3) There will be a lot more competition. 20 years ago the only immigrant-receiving countries were a handful of Northwest European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Now almost all of Europe is looking for immigrants, as are many middle eastern countries, several East Asian countries. In a few decades places like China, Latin America and probably India will be looking for immigrants.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

This is a key point, IMHO. For many reasons, climate/environment being among the top, a gradual decrease in the world’s population due to lower birthrates is the best possible outcome, not a problem.

The problem (again IMHO) is our economic system that only seems to be able to thrive (or perhaps survive) in population growth situations. I’m no economist, but to the layman it appears that the obvious solution is to create a way for our (the world’s actually) economy to function well with a stable or even declining population. It really seems like the only way forward that we have a chance to survive as a species (notwithstanding a major nuclear war or universe/celestial event that takes us out in the meantime).

The problem is it won't be a gradual decline, it will be a collapse in most places, with the collapse in working age population coming before the collapse in the total population. China will lose 700 million people this century, for example. That is 10 WW2s.

The problem with a declining population is it creates a deflationary pressure. People defer purchases (because you know it will be cheaper in the future), both the public and private sector have limited incentive to invest (because they know demand will be lower in the future). If nobody is investing and prices are declining it is hard to create jobs. For a while (as we see in Japan and Korea) there will still be inflationary pressure in the dominant cities even if the population is declining, but eventually you run out of urbanization.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by trueviking

I’m in shock that in 2020 cities still did that.

What is that big glass box in Brantford?

The block was demolished in 2010 - it's not quite that recent. The new building is a YMCA. Only about 1/3 of the former block has actually been redeveloped - the remaining 2/3 is still a vacant lot. the City went out with an RFP for it's development a few years ago but I haven't heard anything about it for a while.. This is what the remainder was supposed to be developed with:



To give an idea of the severity of the demolition - this is the same location in 2009 and 2022:

2009:



2022:

[MolsonExport]

Great finds, Bolognium.

Sure, downtown Brantford had tons of dilapidated buildings, but nuking the core made the place a complete bore.

It is a shame that at least some of those buildings couldn't have been rehabilitated. This is sometimes where the market economy fails. What may not make immediate sense economically can pay huge dividends in the future. Granted, Brantford was no Montreal: the economic churn that helps most large cities (except Detroit, maybe) could not be counted on to eventually pull downtown Brantford out of the doldrums.

Either way, they've destroyed their downtown, and replacing it with some suburban-style campus is never going to bring it back. Perhaps it will eventually become like the rest of the city: bland suburbs with fast food chains and soul-sucking architecture.

[Innsertnamehere]

To be clear it wasn't a market economy that failed Brantford - City Council expropriated the whole block and demolished it by government fiat.

[MolsonExport]

If population decline takes hold in Ontario, we will see a lot more downtown Brantfords in the future.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

To be clear it wasn't a market economy that failed Brantford - City Council expropriated the whole block and demolished it by government fiat.

Yes of course, but the place was clearly in very bad shape before this poor decision was made.

[ScreamingViking]

To me, the "backside" of Brantford's main drag always felt very similar to that of St. Catherines'.

The experience of Colborne was very different from that of St. Paul, though.

Different cities in different stages of urban life. Didn't mean that Colborne should have been ravaged the way it was... that was some 1960s-era levelling!

[MolsonExport]

DT Saint Catharines hung on long enough and now (I think?) it is rebounding. Brantford dashed their chance.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

DT Saint Catharines hung on long enough and now (I think?) it is rebounding. Brantford dashed their chance.

It seems to be. But still a ways to go. There are provincial government staff who cite the "danger" of parking near the complex at 301 St. Paul (I don't feel it, but then I have a different tolerance)

There's a lot more to downtown Brantford though than the stretch that was demolished. I think the university will go a long way to making it better, but over time I think that'll happen regardless.

[kora]

The juxtaposition in Brantford of the fancy street lights and the desolate streetscape is amusing

[MolsonExport]

Downtown St. Thomas (Talbot Street) looks an awful lot like Downtown Brantford used to look (prior to being nuked), although the former is substantially more vibrant (less run down).

https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Tho..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDkyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Tho..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDkyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D


even closer to home is downtown Strathroy. Much smaller city, yet the downtown, while not exactly thriving, is still worth getting out to. (The local vietnamese place brings us in from London 4 or so times per year...best Bahn-mi sandwiches ever).

https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Tho..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDkyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

https://www.google.com/maps/place/St+Tho..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDkyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

why did Brantford's DT fall off the deep end, compared to similar and smaller deindustrialized SW Ontario cities?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The problem is it won't be a gradual decline, it will be a collapse in most places, with the collapse in working age population coming before the collapse in the total population. China will lose 700 million people this century, for example. That is 10 WW2s.

I don't think we can make meaningful predictions 50-100 years out, and 100 years is a long time frame that is not felt as a "collapse"-like event by humans living through it. Maybe China's demographics will shift a bit, they'll only be down 300M, and that loss of a fraction of a percent annually will be more than offset by technological gains.

India has so much low-hanging fruit that they could experience a very high growth rate that would offset a comparatively large reduction in the work force.

People defer purchases (because you know it will be cheaper in the future), both the public and private sector have limited incentive to invest (because they know demand will be lower in the future). If nobody is investing and prices are declining it is hard to create jobs.

This is true but the amount of employment needed is falling in this scenario and old infrastructure tends to be more suitable for a shrinking population than a growing one. If Toronto had 3 million people it wouldn't need new subways, the highways wouldn't be crowded, etc. I think it is more of an "it's complicated" scenario than obviously bad.

I think it's true that if your demographic is living off of others, you are better off being in a smaller demographic and the others being larger. For example if you want the government to subsidize 65+, it's better for that cohort to be 10% of the population than 40%.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

DT Saint Catharines hung on long enough and now (I think?) it is rebounding. Brantford dashed their chance.

DT St. Catharines or St. Kitts as many Niagara residents call it was on the up and up pre Covid. Molson, I believe you saw the city packed with events a number of years back?

St. Paul St. was converted back to two way, adding landscaping, some fairy lights, and the biggest impacts:
- Brock University school of Fine & Performing Arts. Multimillion dollar renovation of old Canada Hair Cloth Buildings (generous donation from local Walker family) and bringing hundreds of students right into downtown Monday-Friday.

- 5,300 seat Meridian Arena (6,000 capacity for concerts). Home to Ice Dogs hockey team and River Lions basketball team. (Elton John and Seinfeld are notable acts that played there)

- First Ontario Performing Arts Centre (home to Niagara symphony) two performance halls and 1-screen indie movie theatre

Very recently: Construction of an 18 storey apartment building, Carlisle Square with 228 units. This building makes an impact from Highway 406.

A lot of vacancies happened during Covid and the downtown core is still trying to get that precovid momentum back. That new apartment building will help and there's a few more high-rise proposals sitting on the table. A 30 storey on James St. cleared the site but never started construction.
The more residential that gets built, the more BrockU students and others will live downtown.

Better than Brantford: yup
St. Catharines has potentially hundreds of thousands of Niagara residents to pull from instead of just the ~152,000 that live in the city limits. Niagara region is heading towards 600k in the near future and St. Catharines not Niagara Falls is the heart of the region.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by someone123

I don't think we can make meaningful predictions 50-100 years out, and 100 years is a long time frame that is not felt as a "collapse"-like event by humans living through it. Maybe China's demographics will shift a bit, they'll only be down 300M, and that loss of a fraction of a percent annually will be more than offset by technological gains.

India has so much low-hanging fruit that they could experience a very high growth rate that would offset a comparatively large reduction in the work force.

Demographics is fairly predictable. Barring a catastrophe, most babies in 2025 will still be around at the turn of the century in most countries. Even if China (or another country) finds some miraculous way to reverse TFR, it will take decades for those changes to work their way into the workforce.

It isn’t a fraction of a percent annually. Look at China in 2070 for example.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2070/

It will be very noticeable when almost 2% of the population reaches retirement age each year, with about half a percent of the population turning 18 to possibly replace them. Even if they change the retirement age you will still get the same effect, just with a different year.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is true but the amount of employment needed is falling in this scenario and old infrastructure tends to be more suitable for a shrinking population than a growing one. If Toronto had 3 million people it wouldn't need new subways, the highways wouldn't be crowded, etc. I think it is more of an "it's complicated" scenario than obviously bad.

But we aren’t talking about the population declining and then stabilizing or growing from a new level, we are talking about continuous decline.

Subway managers know that next year they will have fewer passengers, and the following year fewer still. Stores know they will have fewer customers every year. If you are a homeowner you know your property values will go down every year (making mortgages almost impossible). Non-homeowners have no incentive to buy a house because they known it will be cheaper next year.