Great Lakes Cities

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Razor

I agree with this! Because of Canada's relatively small population, Toronto is a "
turn key city", that wears many hats..It's Nashville, Manhattan, L.A, etc. All rolled into one..It doesn't specialize in any one industry..If it was the federal capital, it would have the government too..

In 2026 and going forward, this is likely true.

Canada is not usually regarded as a highly centralized state but is prolly closer to a France-UK-Russia power/wealth distribution than a U.S.-China-Germany one. Montreal has a big global name but is no longer nationally critical, and Ottawa has never been particularly important. Toronto — up a huge proportion of immigrants, wealth and corporate might. It's the NYC/LA/Chi/Boston/Bay Area of Canada. Much of what really matters in Canada is within 100 miles of CN Tower.

At the same time, portions of Ontario really are culturally similar to adjacent U.S. states. It's very similar headed from Buffalo or Detroit into Canada.

There's a lot of scholarship on the inefficiencies of highly centralized states. Why Germany seems to outperform France or UK, why U.S. despite all the crazy seems to outperform most developed economies. Canada's economy already has weird inefficiencies with focus on real estate and energy extraction. It will be interesting how this plays out in the coming decades.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by pj3000

American comments just may be a reaction to what seems to be an attempt to completely disassociate Toronto/Ontario from a geographic region in which it is located and to which has been economically intricately connected to for a century and a half. It's particularly interesting when we consider the fact that Toronto became Toronto largely due to US companies establishing plants in Ontario back in the day. GE, Westinghouse, DuPont, Wrigley, Goodyear, Colgate-Palmolive... just to name a few of the biggies aside from GM and Ford. Understandably, that manufacturing base on longer exists in the same way (nor does it across the border), but shedding a century-plus history of well-established ties to a region (not to mention shedding the actual physiographic region itself ) ain't so easy.

That "fact" requires a very big citation needed sign beside it. Toronto was already the largest city in Ontario before most of those companies were even founded and there's no reason to assume that they wouldn't have just located in whatever other city was the largest if it wasn't Toronto. Nor is there evidence that they would have still operated there if the conditions weren't already in place for manufacturing to thrive, nor evidence that they otherwise played the outsized role you're claiming.

Anyone actually familiar with Toronto is well aware that it was affected by proximity to the US. The conflict of 1812, the spirits industry that thrived during prohibition, and yes cross border trade. Every factor that a place is exposed to helps to shape it. No one is denying that so the whole "both sides" business that Steely is peddling is nonsense.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

No one is denying that so the whole "both sides" business that Steely is peddling is nonsense.

MonkeyRonin certainly sounded like he was denying it with his "Toronto and US great lakes cities couldn't be more different" line.

They are different, but at the same time they aren't in different galaxies either.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Notice how it's only Americans claiming that Ontario is more like/more connected to the US Great Lakes than it is to other parts Canada (yet would the same not be true in reverse?), while all of the Canadian forumers seem to be objecting to that? Shouldn't that be a clue, that maybe you're missing something and that they might understand more about their own country than you do; and that just maybe, that not quite everything there revolves around the US?

Gee, almost makes you wonder why so few non-Americans still post here...

For whatever reason, some small segment of the Canadian population likes to think that it is a wildly different place than the United States when...it's pretty much the same. The landscape is similar, the language is the same, cars and most products are the same.

Mexico...is very different from the United States. Canada...is not. Yet Mexicans never, ever wag their fingers at Americans. They never deliver these pseudo-academic lectures.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Razor

I agree with this! Because of Canada's relatively small population, Toronto is a "
turn key city", that wears many hats..It's Nashville, Manhattan, L.A, etc. All rolled into one..It doesn't specialize in any one industry..If it was the federal capital, it would have the government too..

It does have government as the provincial capital of a Province where 38% of Canadians or almost 16.5 million people live even if not the Federal capital like Ottawa. And having both cities in the same Province certainly helps. Ontario would rank just under NY State in population when comparing to USA.

pj3000, I think by trying to say Toronto grew as a branch town for American companies ignores that Toronto was and has continued to be the headquarters for the vast majority of homegrown Canadian companies, banks as well, and since overtaking Montreal in prominence by the end of the 1960s it has only become more and more important within Canada as its population accelerated far ahead of any other Canadian Metro. Hamilton was much more of a branch town than Toronto. Buffalo was the branch town of the Great Lakes and suffered much more heavily with de-industrialization than either Toronto or even Hamilton did.

Like Razor and others have stated, Toronto is an everything city. The best, internationally recognized and largest university is in Toronto. The financial/FIRE capital, the media capital, the largest tech job hub region, where the vast majority of resource based companies have their head offices or major offices (if Calgary is the official HQ) etc etc. If you're a journalist you want to be working for one of the largest national TV stations or newspapers based in Toronto. The largest amount of logistics and light industrial space is in the GTA. Almost 900,000,000 square feet of industrial space! (Colliers)

Colloquially (and disparagingly) Toronto is referred to by some people in other provinces as "the centre of the Universe"
I heard that line too many times by older Gen X to Boomer generation types in Alberta.

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Colloquially (and disparagingly) Toronto is referred to by some people in other provinces as "the centre of the Universe"
I heard that line too many times by older Gen X to Boomer generation types in Alberta.

It's also referred to that way by people in its own province. It's a fairly common view in Windsor and I imagine in much of Northern Ontario as well.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

For whatever reason, some small segment of the Canadian population likes to think that it is a wildly different place than the United States when...it's pretty much the same. The landscape is similar, the language is the same, cars and most products are the same.

Mexico...is very different from the United States. Canada...is not. Yet Mexicans never, ever wag their fingers at Americans. They never deliver these pseudo-academic lectures.

At your workplace ask how many of your coworkers own a —.
The — culture is one of the biggest differences between USA and Canada. The only people I've ever known to own a — were actual hunters (deer, elk, moose) none had one for "personal protection"

To most Canadians that's insane to have a — for that purpose. Around 85-90% of — used in Canada for crime come illegally smuggled in from the United States.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

This is interesting from my perspective because there's no such sub-category of "western great lakes" to compliment your "eastern great lakes" region.

I've lived in Chicago for all 5 decades of my life and have never once heard a single person here reference the city as being "western great lakes".

Chicago is:

A North American city
A US city
A Midwest city
A Great Lakes city
A Rust Belt city

"Western Great Lakes" isn't a thing here.

Maybe because "Midwest" already covers that base?

I'm fine with simply "Great Lakes" or even expanding it to the official "Great Lakes - St. Lawrence River Basin". Eastern Great Lakes just breaks down the very large and diverse macro-region into something a bit more manageable, and provides a nod to the distinction between say, upstate NY and northern Minnesota or between southern Ontario (Toronto) and northern Ontario (Thunder Bay). And it does distinguish the geographically smaller and much more densely industrialized region surrounding Lakes Erie and Ontario.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Chicago has closer business interaction with NYC and LA than it does with any place in Canada, so it seems entirely plausible to me that the same is true for Toronto regarding Montreal and Vancouver vs. the US.

I don't doubt that for Chicago, I wouldn't know. But I understand the circumstances of century-plus old tight commerce connections between the greater Toronto area and points in close proximity across the border to know that it simply could not be the case with Vancouver.

"Business interaction" is obviously much more robust with nearby cities who share major global manufacturing operations and highly-integrated supply chains than it is with a city that is located on an opposite coast 2k miles away and only has developed into a more major city in recent decades. Unless we're going to really fuzzy and accommodating with the definition of "business interaction"...

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

That "fact" requires a very big citation needed sign beside it. Toronto was already the largest city in Ontario before most of those companies were even founded and there's no reason to assume that they wouldn't have just located in whatever other city was the largest if it wasn't Toronto. Nor is there evidence that they would have still operated there if the conditions weren't already in place for manufacturing to thrive, nor evidence that they otherwise played the outsized role you're claiming.

Anyone actually familiar with Toronto is well aware that it was affected by proximity to the US. The conflict of 1812, the spirits industry that thrived during prohibition, and yes cross border trade. Every factor that a place is exposed to helps to shape it. No one is denying that so the whole "both sides" business that Steely is peddling is nonsense.

I'm not suggesting by any means that Toronto somehow owes its existence to US companies; rather that Toronto largely became what it is today because of those early 20th century US manufacturing company developments. That is, laying the foundations of highly-prosperous global city. I would suggest reading up on Canada's 1879 National Policy and how it (along with access to plentiful Ontario natural resources) encouraged American manufacturing firms to establish major operations just across the border in southern Ontario, and resulted in significant immigration, infrastructure developments that only served to tighten trade ties with the US, and the overall benefits of wealth that plays the major role in developing metropolises.

This is not my take on things -- it's history. There's ample reading material about it.

Originally Posted by Wigs

pj3000, I think by trying to say Toronto grew as a branch town for American companies ignores that Toronto was and has continued to be the headquarters for the vast majority of homegrown Canadian companies, banks as well, and since overtaking Montreal in prominence by the end of the 1960s it has only become more and more important within Canada as its population accelerated far ahead of any other Canadian Metro. Hamilton was much more of a branch town than Toronto. Buffalo was the branch town of the Great Lakes and suffered much more heavily with de-industrialization than either Toronto or even Hamilton did.

I'm not saying that Toronto only grew because it was a "branch town" for American companies. Only that American heavy manufacturing companies, and then consumer goods and financial firms, etc. becoming established in southern Ontario was the major impetus for Toronto developing into a major city, and thus evolving into the commercial capital of Canada. It's not some happy accident that Canada's primary city is in direct proximity to the American manufacturing belt... southern Ontario became THE focus for the vast majority of American industrial investment in Canada.

And I'll pose you two questions related to your above comments:
- Why did Toronto overtake Montreal in prominence? i.e., which city had the much greater economic momentum and why?
- Why did population accelerate in Toronto at such a rate? Why were these immigrants to the Toronto area going there?

Originally Posted by Wigs

Like Razor and others have stated, Toronto is an everything city. The best, internationally recognized and largest university is in Toronto. The financial/FIRE capital, the media capital, the largest tech job hub region, where the vast majority of resource based companies have their head offices or major offices (if Calgary is the official HQ) etc etc. If you're a journalist you want to be working for one of the largest national TV stations or newspapers based in Toronto. The largest amount of logistics and light industrial space is in the GTA. Almost 900,000,000 square feet of industrial space! (Colliers)

Yeah, I would never argue otherwise.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Eastern Great Lakes just breaks down the very large and diverse macro-region into something a bit more manageable, and provides a nod to the distinction between say, upstate NY and northern Minnesota or between southern Ontario (Toronto) and northern Ontario (Thunder Bay). And it does distinguish the geographically smaller and much more densely industrialized region surrounding Lakes Erie and Ontario.

the split between dense industrialization and the more rural/wilderness areas in the great lakes region has always been a north/south one, not east/west.

the northern part of the region is where the resources have always been extracted from, and the southern portion has always been where those resources have been processed.

as a general rule: processing resources builds much biger cities than extracting resources.




source: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2017/08/th...son/the-great-lakes-at-night-from-space/

[Wigs]

Great satellite image!

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the split between dense industrialization and the more rural/wilderness areas in the great lakes region has always been a north/south one, not east/west.

the northern part of the region is where the resources have always been extracted from, and the southern portion has always been where those resources have been processed.

as a general rule: processing resources builds much biger cities than extracting resources.

Absolutely, maybe an upper lakes vs. lower lakes distinction... extraction and bulk transport vs. finished industrial goods.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

MonkeyRonin certainly sounded like he was denying it with his "Toronto and US great lakes cities couldn't be more different" line.

They are different, but at the same time they aren't in different galaxies either.

You're zeroing in on that single expression as though it implies no nuance, but are ignoring everything else I've written. Literally the same paragraph you quoted even acknowledged some of the similarities between these places!

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

For whatever reason, some small segment of the Canadian population likes to think that it is a wildly different place than the United States when...it's pretty much the same. The landscape is similar, the language is the same, cars and most products are the same.

Mexico...is very different from the United States. Canada...is not. Yet Mexicans never, ever wag their fingers at Americans. They never deliver these pseudo-academic lectures.

Another American telling us what we are. Obviously there are many similarities and a largely shared culture and heavily intertwined history between these countries. Doesn't change the very simple fact (the original premise that's being disputed here) that Canadians first and forehave more in common with each other than they do with their American neighbours.

Originally Posted by pj3000

I don't doubt that for Chicago, I wouldn't know. But I understand the circumstances of century-plus old tight commerce connections between the greater Toronto area and points in close proximity across the border to know that it simply could not be the case with Vancouver.

"Business interaction" is obviously much more robust with nearby cities who share major global manufacturing operations and highly-integrated supply chains than it is with a city that is located on an opposite coast 2k miles away and only has developed into a more major city in recent decades. Unless we're going to really fuzzy and accommodating with the definition of "business interaction"...

So if we accept that Chicago has more economic links to NY or LA than it does to any place in Canada (presumably because these are the primate cities of the country that it's part of), then why is it so preposterous to assume the same would not also be true that Canada's cities are more linked to their country's primate city than to neighbouring American ones?

The Canadian economy is inextricably linked to that of the US (moreso than in reverse), particularly where manufacturing is concerned. But in Canada - just like they do in the US or any other country - the domestic relationships, be they economic, political, social, or culture - take precedent over transnational ones.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I'm not suggesting by any means that Toronto somehow owes its existence to US companies; rather that Toronto largely became what it is today because of those early 20th century developments. That is, laying the foundations of highly-prosperous global city. I would suggest reading up on Canada's 1879 National Policy and how it (along with access to plentiful Ontario natural resources) encouraged American manufacturing firms to establish major operations just across the border in southern Ontario, and resulted in significant immigration, infrastructure developments that only served to tighten trade ties with the US, and the overall benefits of wealth that plays the major role in developing metropolises.

This is not my take on things -- it's history. There's ample reading material about it.



I'm not saying that Toronto only grew because it was a "branch town" for American companies. Only that American heavy manufacturing companies, and then consumer goods and financial firms, etc. becoming established in southern Ontario was the major impetus for Toronto developing into a major city, and thus evolving into the commercial capital of Canada. It's not some happy accident that Canada's primary city is in direct proximity to the American manufacturing belt... southern Ontario became THE focus for the vast majority of American industrial investment in Canada.

And I'll pose you two questions related to your above comments:
- Why did Toronto overtake Montreal in prominence? i.e., which city had the much greater economic momentum and why?
- Why did population accelerate in Toronto at such a rate? Why were these immigrants to the Toronto area going there?



Yeah, I would never argue otherwise.

The fur trade laid the basis for Canada, as noted by Harold Innis about a century ago (Innis was probably Canada's first social scientist of any real distinction).

The fur trade linked Montreal with Western Canada. Montreal was the mercantile center and port city that linked Britain and Europe with Canada. It was the reception point for both manufactured goods from Britain and furs (and later timber, wheat etc.) from the interior, which travelled through the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system. The North West Company was headquartered in Montreal, as were the railways later.

Toronto's rise and eventual dominance was linked to continentalism, or the shift from an orientation to Britain to the US. American capital preferred Toronto and Ontario to Montreal and Quebec, as Ontario was English-speaking and more closely connected to the industrial heartland. So it got the branch plants and Canadian HQs.

Another advantage Toronto had was a much more extensive and prosperous agricultural hinterland, and as I noted before, the rise of the Toronto Stock Exchange was due to the mineral wealth of northern Ontario.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Toronto — up a huge proportion of immigrants, wealth and corporate might. It's the NYC/LA/Chi/Boston/Bay Area of Canada. Much of what really matters in Canada is within 100 miles of CN Tower.

And test market "middle Canada" is maybe 90 minutes or 2 hours away.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That kinda blows my mind, actually.

Never would've guessed Detroit was already 2/3 detached SFH way back in 1940.

We often think of pre-war Detroit as sorta like a half-scale Chicago, but that SFH stat is a pretty steep divergence between the two for the time.

Keep in mind those are structure counts, not unit counts. But in terms of magnitude, Detroit kinda was a half-scale Chicago. Or at least a 40%-scale Chicago. The city of Detroit easily had the second largest total of attached housing structures in the Great Lakes region in 1940, and the fourth largest amount in the entire country at the time behind NYC, Chicago, and Philadelphia. (Although Los Angeles and Detroit were very close in population at the time, Detroit had 90k multi-unit structures in 1940 versus L.A.'s 68k.)

# Detroit multi-unit structures: 89,355
# Chicago multi-unit structures: 203,829

89,355 / 203,829 = 43.8%

Detroit 1940 population: 1,623,452
Chicago 1940 population: 3,396,808

1,623,452 / 3,396,808 = 47.8%

But the discussion does highlight where Detroit erred in development planning. If the city of Detroit had at least matched Chicago in the distribution between multi-unit and single-unit housing then it might have delayed the population decline by a decade.

[Docere]

Population (2025):

Greater Toronto Area 7,680,093
Greater Montreal 4,597,837
Greater Vancouver 3,087,023

Montreal is 60% the size of Toronto and Vancouver 40%.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Keep in mind those are structure counts, not unit counts.

Oh...... right, right, right.

That makes a massive difference, and a million times more sense, than how I initially interpreted Docere's comment.

I thought the data was saying that Detroit was 60+% detached SFH, by total units, back in 1940, much as it is today, which was very —-y.

Detroit's % of housing units in detached SFH was clearly A LOT lower back in the day, likely much closer to Chicago's given that their peak 1950 pop. densities weren't earth-shatteringly different: 17,000 ppsm for Chicago, 13,300 ppsm for Detroit.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But the discussion does highlight where Detroit erred in development planning. If the city of Detroit had at least matched Chicago in the distribution between multi-unit and single-unit housing then it might have delayed the population decline by a decade.

Well, the other piece of the puzzle is that chicago also kept building new housing in the post-war era at a decent enough clip to offset the substantial loss of housing units in other parts of town (think of the tens of thousands of units built in the miles of highrises and 4+1's lining the north lakeshore), such that chicago actually has a bit more housing units today than it did in 1950, vs. Detroit which experienced a 50% drop in housing units over that time.

And the VAST majority of new housing units built in chicago over the past 7 decades have been MFH, so Chicago's % of MFH housing has almost certainly INCREASED since 1950, which might seem counterintuitive given the poulation loss, but people often fail to fully appreciate just how much larger average HH sizes were back in the day.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Canada is not usually regarded as a highly centralized state but is prolly closer to a France-UK-Russia power/wealth distribution than a U.S.-China-Germany one. Montreal has a big global name but is no longer nationally critical, and Ottawa has never been particularly important. Toronto — up a huge proportion of immigrants, wealth and corporate might. It's the NYC/LA/Chi/Boston/Bay Area of Canada. Much of what really matters in Canada is within 100 miles of CN Tower.

There is some truth to this but it's pretty incomplete and should come with major caveats.

One is that Canada is large and Quebec is fairly independent so while Ontario may be larger than other provinces, the relationship between Ontario and another province isn't like it is in a smaller or truly centralized country. Quebec's got its own media, Alberta sells oil to the US, etc. Conversely, the tech industry in Toronto isn't to Canada what the Bay Area's tech industry is to the world. Toronto's most dominant in domestic finance and legacy oligopoly industries.

Canada has a federal government and the provinces collectively outspend the feds. An entity like the province of BC is quite large and influential. Even PEI is quite "constitutionally" independent in many ways.

Yes, Toronto has a large share of Canada's population but so do Montreal or Vancouver. Calgary's share of Canada's GDP is something like 5%, same ballpark as LA or Chicago in the USA.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

For whatever reason, some small segment of the Canadian population likes to think that it is a wildly different place than the United States when...it's pretty much the same. The landscape is similar, the language is the same, cars and most products are the same.

Mexico...is very different from the United States. Canada...is not. Yet Mexicans never, ever wag their fingers at Americans. They never deliver these pseudo-academic lectures.

Well it is a wildly different place with a different language, if you're in Quebec. Toronto, not so much. Definitely way more like "Chicago and Detroit" than Montreal. And that's really not even a question.