..Not to be picky here, but I did pixel count analysis of the two built up areas you've shown and you can't quite fit Winnipeg into Calgary 2/1/2 times.
Eyeballing it, yes, it looks like it would, but comparing the raw pixels of the two built up areas, you have ~160,000 for Winnipeg, and ~335,000 for Calgary. Winnipeg actually fits into Calgary slightly more than two times. I'm assuming these two images are taken from google satellite from the same scale.
As far as population comparison (of city population, which looks to be the built up area in the comparison) it's 633,000 for Winnipeg, versus, 1,065,000 for Calgary, which yes is close to 2/3rds closer to 60% actually. In Calgary's built up area, you've also got two massive city parks that total close to 7,000 acres. you take those out of the equation and the difference lessens.
I'm not sure that having the freeways through Calgary has made that much of a difference. Alot of Calgary's sprawl can be attributed to its geography which is very hilly compared to Winnipeg. Because our creeks and rivers go through valleys they tend to eat up alot of space.
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Originally Posted by trueviking
consider the built up area of calgary compared to that of winnipeg....with 2/3 of the population you can fit 2 1/2 winnipeg's inside the footprint of calgary....this is due in part to the freeway system that has enabled sprawl in the larger city.

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