When did it become apparent that Toronto would surpass Montreal...

[Zeej]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

You could have stopped after your first sentence, as the other information does not get to the heart of the discussion. Economically, Montreal is not a world-beating city, but that is not what I was arguing on the previous page.

What did former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau once say? "Toronto can be Milan, but we will always be Rome".

This applies in many places. There are many "mid tier" USA cities that are bigger than say, New Orleans, but they largely consist of dull, hollowed-out, 9-to-5 downtowns surrounded by an inner ring of slums and then endless banal sprawl. I don't want to visit Minneapolis because it has the headquarters of Target. Unless you are in Paris (London) for business matters, you don't spend your time at La Défense (Canary Wharf).

The urban fabric of Montreal is what pulls visitors.

If we're using fortune 500 companies to determine the importance of cities, then by his own metric, Boston and Seattle are far, far, far ahead of Toronto as well, and they both have larger GDPs.

San Jose, with a CSA population of approximately 9M, the core city of Silicon Valley and one of the highest GDPs in North America, both total and per capita, has attained the highest tier possible.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Zeej

If we're using fortune 500 companies to determine the importance of cities, then by his own metric, Boston and Seattle are far, far, far ahead of Toronto as well, and they both have larger GDPs.

San Jose, with a CSA population of approximately 9M, the core city of Silicon Valley and one of the highest GDPs in North America, both total and per capita, has attained the highest tier possible.

No doubt about the economic gravitas of San Jose. Did anyone ever go to San Jose as a tourist?

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[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

It feels to me like Seattle has moved up a peg over the past couple decades, and that has less to do with metropolitan populations than the big companies located there. The Bay Area isn't really much more populated than Toronto but I think is more globally important and better known. I always thought of SF and Toronto as being roughly on par scale-wise. The old vintage BART development there reminds me of Toronto subway scale or maybe even was more ambitious in its day. Seattle transit reminds me of a slightly fancier version of what Calgary has which is pretty sad given the wealth level there.

I'd say Toronto feels bigger than Montreal now. I've been to both many times but I'd still put Montreal neighbourhoods on top and I'd rather visit there generally, if we're just talking about the city.

I don't think math about % of people in smaller cities or differentials from Saskatoon mean much. Sure, a person who's only been to a small city might be surprised in a larger one, but people do travel. The ones who go to Montreal from Western Canada are probably about as likely to go to big American cities.

We live in a time when a city's importance doesn't correlate with impressiveness on the ground.

Notwithstanding the most important cities of the 20th century - the New Yorks, Londons, Tokyos and Parises - the most important cities of the 21st century are arguably the San Francisco Bay Area and Shenzhen. The real nerve centre of the former is not San Francisco itself, but the scattered suburban office parks of Silicon Valley, and the raison d'etre for the latter was that it was adjacent to a real world city of the mid-20th century (Hong Kong) that participated in the global economy.

The role of a powerful city from antiquity until the late 20th century, which was both a bazaar of people and ideas in close proximity to each other and simultaneously a very impressive collection of monuments and architectural projection of power and influence is more or less dead.

I'll be honest. If I was a teenager now, I don't think I'd form a budding interest in cities the way I did when I was a teenager in the 1990s.

[craner]

September 30, 1967 at 01:31:47am
(To answer the thread question).

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

We live in a time when a city's importance doesn't correlate with impressiveness on the ground.

Notwithstanding the most important cities of the 20th century - the New Yorks, Londons, Tokyos and Parises - the most important cities of the 21st century are arguably the San Francisco Bay Area and Shenzhen. The real nerve centre of the former is not San Francisco itself, but the scattered suburban office parks of Silicon Valley, and the raison d'etre for the latter was that it was adjacent to a real world city of the mid-20th century (Hong Kong) that participated in the global economy.

The role of a powerful city from antiquity until the late 20th century, which was both a bazaar of people and ideas in close proximity to each other and simultaneously a very impressive collection of monuments and architectural projection of power and influence is more or less dead.

I'll be honest. If I was a teenager now, I don't think I'd form a budding interest in cities the way I did when I was a teenager in the 1990s.

This is true although I'm not sure it's just in our time where some centers of power are outside of vibrant and impressive urban cities. Even hundreds of years ago we had places like Versailles and Peterhof which today are considered part of their respective cities but back then they were very much separate locations because the cities were smaller and travel times were much slower. And while those places are impressive, they're not cities. Not all that different from San Jose versus San Francisco.

And we've long had examples of capital cities, which contain significant political power, that were not the largest nor most impressive cities in their country or region. DC, Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa etc. It's not unusual for elites to want some distance between themselves and the plebs in major population centers, or to want neutrality between different competing centres. But not too great of a distance in most cases. Ottawa and DC are still in the largest population corridors within a reasonable drive from the heart of the population. And SJ is still near one of the most urban, vibrant and celebrated cities in the US. It wasn't located in say, the wilderness of Montana. So I'm not sure how much it matters that a metro of 10 million like the SF Bay area which has a dense, vibrant, and impressive city at its core also has important elsewhere in the region. At least any more than it made Paris less important for leadership to be in Versailles.

But it's definitely true that car culture has made some important cities less impressive from an urban perspective. Houston, LA, etc. But they're still impressive in other ways like their sheer size, highway capacity, and number of high-rises and skyscrapers across the region.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by craner

September 30, 1967 at 01:31:47am
(To answer the thread question).

What happened at that time?

[JohnTitor]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

KW is not part of the GTA. When London had Go Train service, did you consider it part of the GTA? It is like saying that Philadelphia is part of New York City.

The entire Waterloo region is a satellite urban area of Toronto and has seen pretty much the exact same growth rates as the City of Toronto and the surrounding regions of Durham, York, Peel and Halton.

Less than 20 years ago, Hamilton and Halton were barely considered part of the GTA…now it’s referred to as the GTHA. It is one giant continuous urban area whether people like it or not.

50 years ago, regions of Peel, York and Durham would never be part of Greater Toronto….Scarborough and North York were considered its suburbs! But the city and region grew and here we are.

The region continues to grow and now places like Niagara, Wellington, Brantford, Waterloo, Dufferin and Peterborough are considered its fringe.

The London GO train was only a pilot project as Doug Ford was interested in making GO Ontario’s version of VIA….but they axed it once Amtrak announced they would be restarting the Chicago-Detroit-Toronto train which would bypass London.

https://www.gotransit.com/en/system-map

A city is not all of a sudden bigger and better because of some ridiculously expansive enumeration scheme.

This has nothing to do with population, Toronto has cemented itself as the largest city in Canada and it will likely hold onto that for the foreseeable future.

Just a few replies above mine you once again had someone using GDP of the GTA and comparing it to the Metropolitan Areas of Seattle, Boston and some other American cities and claiming they were more important and had a larger GDP LOL.

Americans classify Metropolitan areas differently than Canada, hence the GDP of an American city is inflated or a Canadian city is less when comparing the two.

The mental gymnastics that some folks play to discredit and downplay the rise of Toronto is absolutely astounding.

If you’re going to compare American city GDP’s to Toronto’s GDP, then the playing field needs to be even.

[JohnTitor]

Originally Posted by Zeej

If we're using fortune 500 companies to determine the importance of cities, then by his own metric, Boston and Seattle are far, far, far ahead of Toronto as well, and they both have larger GDPs.

San Jose, with a CSA population of approximately 9M, the core city of Silicon Valley and one of the highest GDPs in North America, both total and per capita, has attained the highest tier possible.

No they don’t, they just classify Metro area differently than Canada does. But you keep telling yourself that. :lol:

[JohnTitor]

Originally Posted by Zeej

To each their own, their are definitely some that prefer Toronto due to its 'bigness' just like there are some that prefer Montreal for deliberately not going down that road.

Oh is that what you folks tell yourselves?

[Kilgore Trout]

Despite what you may think, this is not some Montreal vs. Toronto showdown. If you want to play that game, go to City Data.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

Despite what you may think, this is not some Montreal vs. Toronto showdown. If you want to play that game, go to City Data.

The "surpass" in the thread title pretty much ensured that it would be. "Outgrow" might have been less contentious.

[Xelebes]

Thread has been revived to only be turned into a city vs. city thread. This thread has served its purpose. No need to continue.