Halifax Population & Growth

[q12]

More details here:

https://novascotia.ca/finance/statis...s.asp?id=14439

[terrynorthend]

Wow. Looking at that population growth chart, if we keep pace with growth between 2015 and 2018, we will reach 1 million by 2021! Consider that it took from 1971 to 1991 to grow by 100k, and then we languished from 1991 until basically just two years ago unable to grow by 50k more. It's simply astonishing growth. Probably all (or most) in Halifax. No wonder it looks busier around town.

[Colin May]

Housing is cheaper here and the weather is better, neither of which is the result of any government action.
The best choice is Nova Scotia. As wise investors say 'Value will out'.

[q12]

Halifax's population increased by +8,544 (2%) from 2017/2018.



https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...-eng.htm?HPA=1

[HfxExpat]

This is amazing. I remember in 2017, when the 1 July 2016 CMA population stats showed HRM had grown by 6k in the year a lot of people said that we should wait to see if the numbers were a blip or part of a longer-term growth trend.

We've since followed that with 8k growth in 2017, and 8.5k growth in 2018.

I wonder if this three-year stretch of data will give some developers more confidence about proceeding with some more ambitious projects. Eight thousand new people per year need to live somewhere!

[Keith P.]

This should put the boots to the arguments of anti-development types like Peggy Cameron when they say "Who will be living in all these units?".

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

This should put the boots to the arguments of anti-development types like Peggy Cameron when they say "Who will be living in all these units?".

Answer:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...68&postcount=7

[someone123]

Originally Posted by HfxExpat

I wonder if this three-year stretch of data will give some developers more confidence about proceeding with some more ambitious projects. Eight thousand new people per year need to live somewhere!

The apartment vacancy rate in Halifax has been going down too. It used to be around 3-4% and now it is down close to 1%, the lowest it has ever been (CMHC).

This implies that the number of new apartments has to go up by even more than the increase in population growth, because it can no longer be fueled much by newcomers to the city moving into existing vacant apartments.

One thing that changed about Halifax demographics is that the federal government removed the very low caps on provincially-sponsored immigration to Nova Scotia. The cap used to be something like 300 a year (in the Harper era) while SK or MB would have caps in the thousands. I think PEI may have even had a higher cap than NS (Charlottetown is growing a lot too). Now NS is more in line with other provinces.

[goodgrowth]

Interesting growth recently from Halifax. Some comparison to the Southern Ontario mid-tier cities:

Kitchener - Cambridge - Waterloo (CMA) 567,740
London (CMA) 532,984
Halifax (CMA) 430,512
St. Catharines - Niagara (CMA) 429,036

If Halifax can maintain it's current growth it'll probably stay ahead St. Catharines - Niagara. Question is could it ever catch a city like London given Halifax is much more of a provincial/regional center? I think catching Kitchener is out of the question at this point.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Eventually it will all grow together and Canada will be one big city, then it won't matter who is ahead of who...

[someone123]

I think it's hard to make accurate predictions, because growth patterns are mostly based on migration (not so much births and deaths anymore) and can change very quickly. Population growth in Halifax changed dramatically during the past few years.

I think it's very unlikely that Halifax will pass London within the next 30 years because they are growing at similar rates. A possible scenario would be if London averaged something like 0.5% growth while Halifax averaged 2%, and even then it would take a long time.

The rankings really don't matter though. We are talking about a provincial capital and cities far away in another province. The Ontario cities might compete with each other a bit but Halifax is not a part of that in any significant way. Halifax is increasingly close to being a city state. It's kind of like ranking Tallinn and Gdansk.

One interesting point is that I think even some Canadian cities that were traditionally seen as small places are now becoming fairly substantial. Yet a lot of people seem to still talk about London or Halifax being small towns. Halifax at 430,000 would have been the third most populous municipality in Canada back in 1966.

[Djeffery]

What's the historical trend comparing Halifax to London? Being from London and spending a lot of time in Halifax as a kid visiting my military father, I always loved comparing the 2, and always thought we were neck and neck with each other population wise. Halifax was always more "big city" to me than London though.

[q12]

Nova Scotia is getting younger for the first time since 1964!



https://novascotia.ca/finance/statis...f=&dto=0&dti=3

Until further notice, there ought to be a moratorium on the phrase, “Nova Scotia’s aging population.”

https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/op...t-year-360120/

[q12]

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...020003-eng.htm

Also from Statistics Canada Reports Thread (thanks to goodgrowth):

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Looks like East Hants will be added in 2021.

See Table 12:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...019002-eng.htm

So Halifax CMA could come close to 500K in the next few years...

Looks like Halifax's population estimate for 2022 will likely be around 500,000 once East Hants (Elmsdale/Highway 102, Mount Uniacke/Highway 101) is added to Halifax's CMA.

Based on the increasing growth rate for Halifax, around 2022 the populations estimate will be (~475,000 Halifax + ~25,000 East Hants) approximately 500,000.

[IanWatson]

Interesting that since 2015 Halifax has been growing in all four areas of population factors.

[DigitalNinja]

Also interesting that this estimate is for July 2019. We should be well into 450-460 range in the coming spring/summer of this year.

Intra-provincial migration seems to also be a big thing. Every day on reddit there is someone from Ontario/BC/Alberta asking about moving here or introducing themselves to the area, the reddit community also counts for just a very small part of the over all community. Either way great to see this happening and should be a huge boom for developments. Just need to push through some more of the proposals. Hopefully more development companies will come down this way too.

[ILoveHalifax]

I work in relocation (moving) and everyday I get 5 to 8 leads to send out quotes. As many as 3 or 4 of those leads on any one day might be for Halifax, A couple of years ago people were moving to Alberta; now people are moving east

[someone123]

One of the implications of this is that there's a big disconnect between how ambitious the transportation infrastructure projects are in the city and how fast it's growing.

The current answer seems to be that it's enough to tweak the bus network and build new roads in greenfield suburban areas. That's about it. There's the Windsor Street Exchange project which is badly needed but the city will add 50,000 people before that's built.

The municipality and province should be planning now for a transportation network to serve 600,000 people, and then actually implementing those plans over a 5-15 year timeframe.

[DB_in_Cbus]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

What's the historical trend comparing Halifax to London? Being from London and spending a lot of time in Halifax as a kid visiting my military father, I always loved comparing the 2, and always thought we were neck and neck with each other population wise. Halifax was always more "big city" to me than London though.

I've lived in both. Halifax definitely feels bigger than London. Halifax benefits from being the regional center and also having significant government presence, while London does not. London is also far more compact-it adds to its urban area by continuously converting squares of farmland on the edges of the city, while Halifax is spread out along a huge harbour and the Bedford Basin.

Honestly, lots of London is pretty monotonous and forgettable.

Halifax feels like a much bigger city than it actually is.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

One of the implications of this is that there's a big disconnect between how ambitious the transportation infrastructure projects are in the city and how fast it's growing.

The current answer seems to be that it's enough to tweak the bus network and build new roads in greenfield suburban areas. That's about it. There's the Windsor Street Exchange project which is badly needed but the city will add 50,000 people before that's built.

The municipality and province should be planning now for a transportation network to serve 600,000 people, and then actually implementing those plans over a 5-15 year timeframe.

That's a concern that I have as well. IMHO the biggest part of that problem is that if we wait until our transit system is over capacity, it will be too late. We'll be struggling to play catch-up, plus it will only be more difficult and expensive to create ROWs for rail if that's the way we are going. There should be a plan in place right now that allows for even greater populations of the future.