They are similar density or population?
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- Thread starter kora
- Start date
Housing starts for October. The usual heavy numbers from Toronto and Vancouver , but October Calgary had some pretty beefy numbers.
Something that caught my eye was reported apartment unit starts for Bowness and Downtown/Eau Claire. I don't know which projects those would be for, but apparently 100 units for Bowness and 96 for Downtown/Eau Claire. These numbers also might be delayed, as it also shows Varisty as having housing starts for 48 apartment units...which is the same as the Varisty Mixed use project.
| City | Single Family Home | Semi Detached | Row Housing | Apartment | Total | ...... | ...... | ...... | ...... | ............ |
| Toronto | 434 | 22 | 288 | 2964 | 3708 | |||||
| Vancouver | 217 | 64 | 148 | 2475 | 2904 | |||||
| Calgary | 639 | 196 | 352 | 950 | 2137 | |||||
| Montreal | 112 | 12 | 38 | 1378 | 1540 | |||||
| Ottawa Gatineau | 251 | 42 | 146 | 910 | 1349 | |||||
| Edmonton | 544 | 94 | 126 | 215 | 979 | |||||
| Winnipeg | 106 | 30 | 5 | 16 | 157 |
Something that caught my eye was reported apartment unit starts for Bowness and Downtown/Eau Claire. I don't know which projects those would be for, but apparently 100 units for Bowness and 96 for Downtown/Eau Claire. These numbers also might be delayed, as it also shows Varisty as having housing starts for 48 apartment units...which is the same as the Varisty Mixed use project.
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Okay, so I did a bit more digging and noticed that Statscan also lets you filter by census tract, and this pretty much tells that the 48 new apartment units reported for October for Varsity is the Varsity Mixed Use project...which has had a driller on site since July 30th. So i guess the statscan numbers may come in delayed at times.
trtcttc
Active Member
Probably has to do with their definition of a start. I didn’t follow the Varsity project too closely but maybe the concrete pour was in October.
A housing start is defined as the beginning of construction work on the building where the dwelling unit will be located. This can be described in 2 ways:
- The stage when the concrete has been poured for the whole of the footing around the structure.
- An equivalent stage where a basement will not be part of the structure.
Chinook Arch
Active Member
I don’t care if the numbers from Statscan are delayed a month or two. For me the most interesting part of the numbers is how Calgary compares with the other cities, and which types of dwellings are being built.
By the way, great to see Calgary being a solid third for housing starts this year.
By the way, great to see Calgary being a solid third for housing starts this year.
I think Montreal overbuilt the previous year and is slower this year, next year will be interesting to watch. Whatever the case, the fact Calgary has more housing starts this year than a city almost 3 times the size is an indicator of how busy it is.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
From the estimates in 2022, Calgary is growing annually more than Montreal in absolute terms, and often has been for years. This partly speaks to the relative demand for housing. But there's lots of nuance to this story than the top-line population wouldn't explain.
Montreal has a far more mature and way larger (in both absolute and relative share) rental environment, I'd assume that this would produce far more slack in their housing system to accommodate growth without always new building. Montreal also has a far greater number of students who are prone to splitting accommodation costs - that is to say, getting a roommate from out-of-town grows the population but doesn't trigger new building.
Calgary's tiny rental system, combined with different socioeconomic drivers, age cohorts of growth, would lead to a different demand for new housing v. growth that can be accommodated in the existing stock.
Doynk
New Member
Thanks for all this data! Is there information somewhere showing the number of residential completions coming to market in each quarter? Thanks in advance.
Not that I know of to be honest. Here's the site where the stats come from. There are some other stats, and maybe there's something buried in there somewhere.
Housing Market Information Portal
The housing data you want, the way you want it.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
You are correct, however theirs are due to the amalgamation of those respective cities with their entire surrounding county, and therefore no one would ever confuse Ottawa or Halifax’s municipal density with their urban density. The reason I made my post is because Calgary is, nationwide, 100% of the time seen as the poster child for urban sprawl in Canada, while our population density is actually considerably higher than Ottawa, Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg, Quebec City, (and all the other 2nd/3rd tier cities).
In the past 20 years Calgary's urban density has been on the rise. Not only plenty of inner city projects, but the newer suburbs are far more dense than the older suburbs built from the 60-90's (Brentwood, Acadia, Edgemont, Bonvista etc..)
Beltline_B
Senior Member
I don’t care for the design of many of the new subdivisions, but I will concede that the density is much improved over previous subdivisions.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
There's a million ways to slice it about density as in some way it's all just a proxy for what you are trying to measure. Taking the broader citywide perspective to the next step, an interesting comparison @UrbanWarrior would to estimate how many people live in areas of high density (e.g. 10,000 people / sqkm) for each city. This would be a better proxy for how "urban" a place truly is, because everyone has sprawlly nonsense, but all cities differ from the amount of census tracts with over 10,000 people /sqkm.
Note that like any threshold, 10,000 people / sqkm is totally arbitrary. Many highly "urban" places are far less dense than this, even some suburban places exceed this threshold. The other caveat is census tracts themselves are arbitrary, there's some rules around how they are drawn and updated but fundamentally are made up. Draw the boxes differently and this analysis is totally different.
Here's a rough attempt at figuring out Calgary using censusmapper. I am counting the population of all Census Tracts in red:
Here's a table:
EDIT - I updated the table to include the % of people at that density v. city and metro populations. Shows a bit more nuance to try to get to the answer of why some places "feel" more urban even if Calgary's total numbers are larger. For example, Victoria, Quebec City and Ottawa all perform better at the city-level as a greater share of their population "experiences" living in higher density. The effect is more muted when looking at the CMA totals, as in general for these cities adding the full CMA population is usually just adding low-density suburbs. When looking at the big three (MTL, Vancouver, Toronto) this % share calculation would be vastly different as these cities have both far more people living at high densities, but also far larger share (in theory).
Before we get too exciting at "winning" this arbitrary analysis, look at how many census tracts are that dense in the big three. And it's not just the dark red zones, it's still respectable light reds and greens as well. Calgary really struggles in these categories of mid-density comparatively:
To complete my analysis someone with GIS skills has to do it to count those tracts and population - I can't do that manually. And if we want to get real fancy do all this math again between 2011, 2016 and 2021 censuses to compare change in population living at 10,000 people / sqkm
Note that like any threshold, 10,000 people / sqkm is totally arbitrary. Many highly "urban" places are far less dense than this, even some suburban places exceed this threshold. The other caveat is census tracts themselves are arbitrary, there's some rules around how they are drawn and updated but fundamentally are made up. Draw the boxes differently and this analysis is totally different.
Here's a rough attempt at figuring out Calgary using censusmapper. I am counting the population of all Census Tracts in red:
Here's a table:
| City | # of Tracts over 10,000 people / sqkm | Population Total @ 10,000 People / Sqkm | City Population, 2021 | % of City Population, 2021 | Metro (CMA) Population, 2021 | % of Metro (CMA) Population, 2021 |
| Calgary | 6 | 34,185 | 1,306,784 | 2.6% | 1,481,806 | 2.3% |
| Ottawa | 7 | 31,991 | 1,017,449 | 3.1% | 1,488,307 | 2.1% |
| Quebec City | 8 | 21,219 | 549,459 | 3.9% | 839,311 | 2.5% |
| Hamilton | 3 | 12,887 | 569,353 | 2.3% | 785,184 | 1.6% |
| Winnipeg | 2 | 11,783 | 749,607 | 1.6% | 834,678 | 1.4% |
| Edmonton | 1 | 5,354 | 1,010,899 | 0.5% | 1,418,118 | 0.4% |
| Victoria | 1 | 3,749 | 91,867 | 4.1% | 397,237 | 0.9% |
EDIT - I updated the table to include the % of people at that density v. city and metro populations. Shows a bit more nuance to try to get to the answer of why some places "feel" more urban even if Calgary's total numbers are larger. For example, Victoria, Quebec City and Ottawa all perform better at the city-level as a greater share of their population "experiences" living in higher density. The effect is more muted when looking at the CMA totals, as in general for these cities adding the full CMA population is usually just adding low-density suburbs. When looking at the big three (MTL, Vancouver, Toronto) this % share calculation would be vastly different as these cities have both far more people living at high densities, but also far larger share (in theory).
Before we get too exciting at "winning" this arbitrary analysis, look at how many census tracts are that dense in the big three. And it's not just the dark red zones, it's still respectable light reds and greens as well. Calgary really struggles in these categories of mid-density comparatively:
To complete my analysis someone with GIS skills has to do it to count those tracts and population - I can't do that manually. And if we want to get real fancy do all this math again between 2011, 2016 and 2021 censuses to compare change in population living at 10,000 people / sqkm
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UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Very interesting. Thanks for that! And yes I pretty much totally agree with you. To be fair though, if stampede park were a total census tract itself, there would be 7 census tracts in Calgary with over 10,000+/km2, as the SE Beltline is lumped in with over half of Stampede Park. Unfortunately Inglewood is lumped in with the rail yards as well. It wouldn’t be red, but likely pink. There are a few more examples of this. But yeah it’s really cool to see!
This goes to my original point as well. I’ll be really excited to see how much this map changes by the 2026 census.
This goes to my original point as well. I’ll be really excited to see how much this map changes by the 2026 census.
Albertasaurus
Active Member
Hey folks - long time lurker here, finally decided to take the plunge and join in the discussion. These density maps are really interesting. What was most surprising to me is just how crazy dense Montreal is. It goes to show that high rise doesn't always equate to higher densities, since it's not really a highrise city like TO and Van are. I was also surprised that Vancouver's overall densities are sort of midway between those of Calgary and those of the 2 biggest cities. This seems to make some sense as Vancouver is actually a bit closer in size to Calgary than it is to Montreal (4.2 M, 2.7M, 1.6M if I recall correctly).
Either way, I agree that it's going to be really interesting to see this map change as Calgary intensifies.
On a somewhat related note to UrbanWarrior's point, it's interesting to consider that Calgary is actually a little bit bigger and denser than Dallas (considering civic, not metro population). 1.4 million and 4200/sq mi vs 1.3 million and 3400/sq mi.
Either way, I agree that it's going to be really interesting to see this map change as Calgary intensifies.
On a somewhat related note to UrbanWarrior's point, it's interesting to consider that Calgary is actually a little bit bigger and denser than Dallas (considering civic, not metro population). 1.4 million and 4200/sq mi vs 1.3 million and 3400/sq mi.