How Quebec became North America's urban outlier

[Docere]

The gap between Sao Paulo/Rio and Toronto/Montreal is similar: the second-largest city has around 60-65% of the population of the larger city.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Docere

The gap between Sao Paulo/Rio and Toronto/Montreal is similar: the second-largest city has around 60-65% of the population of the larger city.

If we use the international definition of metro areas (the FUA), which is now used by the Brazilian statistical office:

At the 2022 Brazilian census:
- Sao Paulo metro area: 20,673,280
- Rio de Janeiro metro area: 11,760,550

So Rio is only 57% of Sao Paulo.

For Canada, in 2021, also the FUAs:
- Toronto: 7,236,120
- Montréal: 4,575,140

So Montréal is 63% of Toronto. The gap is not as large as between Sao Paulo and Rio (especially economy wise), but it is larger than between Madrid and Barcelona (Barcelona FUA is at 77% of Madrid FUA's population).

[Docere]

This list is pretty good (no bloated CSAs!) except for the unfortunate tendency to create cross-national metro areas like Detroit-Windsor and San Diego-Tijuana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_metropolitan_areas_in_the_Americas

Interestingly, the population gap between Toronto-Montreal and Montreal-Vancouver is pretty similar.

I'm curious which gap "feels" like a bigger "drop" (not in official population size): Toronto-Montreal or Montreal-Vancouver? I'm talking about the urban experience as a whole. While Toronto's skyline and immigration numbers blows every other Canadian city out of the water, Montreal has some strong urban bones and also functions as the primate city for a nation-within-a-nation.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

This video and the others on the website are all a little too much. It just seems like the site is desperate to portray Montreal as an exceptionally cosmopolitan place as compensation for its relative economic and cultural decline. For whatever reason it has this need to be considered some sort of gem on the world stage in a way that Toronto does not and neither does any individual U.S. city.

This article places Quebec (not just Montreal) as poorer than pretty much every single U.S. state:
https://thehub.ca/2025/11/12/ontario-and-quebec-are-poorer-than-louisiana-and-42-other-states/

Montreal is an absolute gem with a unique culture. Have you been there? What is your problem?

And GDP measures are complete bullshit.

[Docere]

Great post. Short, to the point, no words wasted.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I have seen pretty much everything on online forums, but trying to argue that education and health is as cheap in the US as in Europe is a first.

K-12 schooling is free everywhere in the United States and is typically funded by a dedicated local property tax that has been in place since the 1800s. There must be anti-American rubbish circulating on Tik-Tok or one of those things that is saying otherwise. My county has a pie graph for every property that shows what percentage of that property's total tax goes to the school district, and as you can see it is the largest special category:


The VA health care is funded through the military's budget, which comes out of the general fund (income, capital gains tax, etc.). Medicare has its own payroll tax that has been in place since the mid-1960s. As you can see, it is a progressive tax, with high earners paying more:


Medicaid is funded through a state/federal matching program, whereby the poorer states receive more federal funds. It's a significant example of progressive taxation/wealth redistribution in the United States. The general narrative out there by domestic and foreign critics of the United States that the U.S. has regressive taxation, that there is no wealth redistribution, that there is no government-funded healthcare, etc., but this is incorrect.