Canadian cities are about as dense as German cities

[James Bond Agent 007]

I've been spending a lot of time looking at Canadian and German cities on Google maps lately, and I've noticed that, in spite of their obvious auto-centric-ness, Canada's cities are actually pretty dense.

So I browsed through Wikipedia and came up with these. This is all data within city limits:

CANADA LARGEST CITIES (sort table by population density):
Toronto: 4,427.8 people/sq km
Montreal: 4,833.4 people/sq km
Calgary: 1,592.4 people/sq km
Edmonton: 1,320.4 people/sq km
Winnipeg: 1,623.3 people/sq km
Mississauga: 2,452.6 people/sq km
Vancouver: 5,749.7 people/sq km
Burnaby: 2,750.6 people/sq km
Brampton: 2,469.0 people/sq km

GERMANY LARGEST CITIES (data from individual city Wiki pages. numbers obviously rounded off):
Berlin: 1,250 people/sq km
Frankfurt: 3,000 people/sq km
Hamburg: 2,600 people/sq km
Munich: 4,800 people/sq km
Cologne: 2,500 people/sq km
Dusseldorf: 2,800 people/sq km
Stuttgart: 3,000 people/sq km
Bremen: 1,800 people/sq km

For metros I'll just do the biggest metro in each country:

Metro Toronto: 6,202,225 people and 5,902.75 km2 = 1,050.7 people/sq km (Note: Data is from City of Toronto page. Greater Toronto Wiki seems to have different numbers)

Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region: 11,300,000 people and 7,110 km2 = 1,589.3 people sq/km

Within city limits, Montreal is about as dense as Munich, and Toronto is catching up. Winnipeg is almost as dense as Bremen. And the mega-suburbs of Mississauga, Burnaby and Brampton are roughly as dense as Hamburg and Dusseldorf.

Who woulda thunk?

[James Bond Agent 007]

BTW I skipped Ottawa because it has such a large rural area within its city limits, plus the greenbelts, that it doesn't really count.

[bilbao58]

I think you may have made a typo or something . Wikipedia has Berlin’s pop density as 4227 per sq km.

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

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

I think you may have made a typo or something . Wikipedia has Berlin’s pop density as 4227 per sq km.

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

I was looking at the Berlin page. I used the "urban density" figure. Not sure why that would be considerably less than the overall density, but it sounded better. Not really sure what the distinctions are.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Winnipeg is almost as dense as Bremen.

Somebody is bound to come up with the objection that most of these German city limits contain a lot of rural area.

For instance, if you look at the city limits of Bremen using the aerial photo view on Google maps, you see that it contains a lot of rural, farming areas. In the case of Bremen it probably has to do with the fact that Bremen/Bremerton is a state as well as a city.

But Winnipeg has a lot of rural area as well.

[bilbao58]

Just seems off to me. Your Wikipedia link has Berlin’s “urban” density to be about the same as Houston’s. No way that can be right

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

Just seems off to me. Your Wikipedia link has Berlin’s “urban” density to be about the same as Houston’s. No way that can be right

Yeah, as I said I don't quite understand that one. From the page:

Area
• City/State
891.3 km2 (344.1 sq mi)
• Urban
3,743 km2 (1,445 sq mi)

I know Berlin, like Hamburg and Bremen, is a state as well as a city.

But what do they mean when they say the urban area is more than 1-1/2 times the area of the city/state? Do they mean the urban area of the entire metro? If so, they don't say so.

Maybe because that one is so confusing, we could ignore it?

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Within city limits, Montreal is about as dense as Munich

I think this one is a pretty good comparison.

--> Munich <--
--> Montreal <--

Montreal has a bit of rural area in its SW limits, and also at its northern tip (if you want to call golf courses as "rural"?). Munich seems to have a bit more rural/farms in its western and northern areas, but not by a large amount.

So they're still pretty close.

And the mega-suburbs of Mississauga, Burnaby and Brampton are roughly as dense as Hamburg and Dusseldorf

Mississauga and Burnaby have almost no rural areas left, but Brampton does.

And Dusseldorf has a fair amount of rural area. Maybe a bit more than Brampton but not by a large amount.

So that one is probably a decent comparison as well.

Hamburg, being another city-state, also has a fair amount of rural area, but not a huge amount. Tough call on that one, compared to Brampton.

[Nouvellecosse]

There's also the possibility that the Berlin one is just incorrect which would be my guess. While wikipedia does tend to be quite reliable, it's still possible for there to be mistakes with it being user managed. And of course even conventional encyclopedias can have the odd error even if it's rare. Usually when there are doubts it's best to check the source but in this case most are in German meaning that there can also be translation errors. And when i looked I didn't actually see the urban area or urban density figures listed. But yeah there's no way that Berlin actually has such a low urban density based on everything I've seen.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

And when i looked I didn't actually see the urban area or urban density figures listed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
^
Scroll down the page a bit, in the right column beneath the location map there are some basic stats. The box containing "Population (2022 census)" has a "Density" figure of 4,109/km2 and an "Urban Density" figure of 1,250/km2. Whatever that means.

[James Bond Agent 007]

We could also do a visual inspection.

Hamburg residential area at 53.56 degrees north, scale at 1000 feet.

Edmonton residential area at 53.42 degrees north, scale at 1000 feet.

The 500 foot scale bars aren't quite the same but they're close. Just eyeballing it, the densities appear to be reasonably similar.

It's not Hamburg's densest area, while the Edmonton area is fairly typical for Edmonton. But Edmonton has lots of downtown highrises while Hamburg's densest areas are characterized more by rowhouses and mid-rises. So I think the density of Canada's cities get to approximate Germany's by building lots of highrises.

[softee]

By current population estimates the city proper of Toronto with over 3.1 million people in 630 sq km is closer to 5,000 people per sq km now, & the Greater Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa urban area has been the densest metro area in Canada & The U.S. for quite some time now.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
^
Scroll down the page a bit, in the right column beneath the location map there are some basic stats. The box containing "Population (2022 census)" has a "Density" figure of 4,109/km2 and an "Urban Density" figure of 1,250/km2. Whatever that means.

I mean I didn't see the source wikipedia linked to when I tried to verify its accuracy.

[Crawford]

About half of Berlin proper is rural or lightly inhabited.

Germany, like the rest of Northern Europe, is nothing like Med Europe in terms of density, but I don't think anyone visiting Candian and German cities would conclude they're similarly dense. Germany is a renter society and German cities are dominated by midrise apartment blocks.

[hipster duck]

Yeah, almost all of the big German cities have enormous forests that are, in a sense, city parks within their municipal boundaries:

- Berlin's Gruenewald (the one with all the lakes) + the one in the east
- Frankfurter Stadtwald (the one you fly over when you land at FRA)
- Koenigsforst in Cologne

Half of Stuttgart is undevelopable hillside, often wooded.


Canadian cities have some of this too - like the far northeast of Toronto is farmland and river valleys that are restricted from development - but not nearly to the same extent. Some cities are fully built up, like Vancouver, hence the high population density.

Then there are Canadian cities like Ottawa and Halifax that have such enormous municipal boundaries due to amalgamation with counties that the pop density is ridiculously low if you don't account for urban areas.

[niwell]

In addition to the greenspace factor German (and other Northern European cities) also tend to go from dense midrise apartment blocks to relatively spread out SFH areas pretty quickly. I suspect a lot more people actually live in the former typology but the latter takes up a lot of space. They seem very pleasant and better designed than the average Canadian suburb but probably less dense.

Stuff like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJQnjMoJfzZrgaR59

Also allotment garden areas take up a fair amount of space that would probably be counted as urban in places like Berlin. https://maps.app.goo.gl/AyEz3RZTvdwDSkzU8

So the places where the majority actually live are probably quite a bit more dense than the average Canadian city but overall it may even out.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by niwell

In addition to the greenspace factor German (and other Northern European cities) also tend to go from dense midrise apartment blocks to relatively spread out SFH areas pretty quickly. I suspect a lot more people actually live in the former typology but the latter takes up a lot of space. They seem very pleasant and better designed than the average Canadian suburb but probably less dense.

Stuff like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJQnjMoJfzZrgaR59

Also allotment garden areas take up a fair amount of space that would probably be counted as urban in places like Berlin. https://maps.app.goo.gl/AyEz3RZTvdwDSkzU8

So the places where the majority actually live are probably quite a bit more dense than the average Canadian city but overall it may even out.

So in summary, you're saying that the weighted density is more representative than straight density figures. Which is probably true since that's usually the case in general for things urban enthusiasts care about like transit and pedestrian friendliness and how lively or expansive the urban neighbourhoods feel.

[iheartthed]

I'm pretty sure the weighted population density of Berlin is quite a bit higher than Toronto's. I've driven cars across Berlin, taken buses around Berlin, taken trains around Berlin and I don't recall seeing even one detached single-family house. Not even a neighborhood of row houses for that matter. The overwhelming majority of the population lives in apartment buildings.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by niwell

In addition to the greenspace factor German (and other Northern European cities) also tend to go from dense midrise apartment blocks to relatively spread out SFH areas pretty quickly. I suspect a lot more people actually live in the former typology but the latter takes up a lot of space. They seem very pleasant and better designed than the average Canadian suburb but probably less dense.

Stuff like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJQnjMoJfzZrgaR59

Also allotment garden areas take up a fair amount of space that would probably be counted as urban in places like Berlin. https://maps.app.goo.gl/AyEz3RZTvdwDSkzU8

So the places where the majority actually live are probably quite a bit more dense than the average Canadian city but overall it may even out.

Yeah, that's another point I was trying to make with my Google maps links to the aerial photo views:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Hamburg residential area at 53.56 degrees north, scale at 1000 feet.

Zoom in to a random residential street and you get this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.561809,9..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Could easily pass for suburbs of New Jersey or something, except maybe for the narrower streets.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm pretty sure the weighted population density of Berlin is quite a bit higher than Toronto's. I've driven cars across Berlin, taken buses around Berlin, taken trains around Berlin and I don't recall seeing even one detached single-family house. Not even a neighborhood of row houses for that matter. The overwhelming majority of the population lives in apartment buildings.

Looking over Berlin on Google maps I see a fair amount of SF areas:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Berlin..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Berlin..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Berlin..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Though it looks like there's a lot of duplexes and quadroplexes mixed in with the SF houses.

Whereas in, for example, typical Toronto suburbs you get this, which is pretty dense:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8937028,..._ep=EgoyMDI1MDcxNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D