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darwink said:
I think of the country like multiple bodies in a hydrostatic equilibrium, forces pushing outwards, and forces pushing inwards with fluid flowing between the bodies, and fluid being added from the outside.

Last year Ontario had a 'push' inward of 363,000 international students, net new around 220,000. This year Ontario will have a push of only 160,000 new international students, net new zero maximum (and likely to be lower).

That is a huge change! Especially since arrivals are mostly in a surge in August-September, causing significant pressures in the housing market. Starting for 2025, post-graduation work permits will be changing too. Both combined will mean non-permanent resident number will be a negative contributor to population growth instead of positive.
View attachment 574018

Over the next 3 years, that chart will be net negative by a total of 500,000 or so. This year it should drop by quite a bit with the combination of no new Ukrainian arrivals after March 31, zero contribution from international students, and lower university contributions on post graduate work permits (2019 and 2020 students).
Click to expand...
That may reduce rental pressure in ON, but will it do much to housing prices?

Also need to consider the hydrostatic pressure from mortgage rate increases. The full impact won't be realized until 2027 when all of the 5 year terms locked in before the tightening cycle will have been renewed at higher rates.
 
Calgary on the Cities to Watch List from the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2024

"Calgary ... is also one of the world’s fastest-growing tech and aerospace hubs."

www.henleyglobal.com

Cities to Watch | Wealthiest Cities 2024

Some cities missed out on the Top 50 in the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2024 but are worth watching due to their strong wealth growth potential.
www.henleyglobal.com www.henleyglobal.com
www.henleyglobal.com

Top 10 Cities | Wealthiest Cities 2024

The top 10 cities in the World’s Wealthiest Cities Report 2024 are ranked by their number of resident millionaires with investable wealth of USD 1 million or more.
www.henleyglobal.com www.henleyglobal.com
 
6.4% growth in Airdrie in the last year.
discoverairdrie.com

Airdrie adds over 5,000 residents, census results announced

Airdrie's population is still on the rise. At today's City of Airdrie council meeting the results from the census earlier this year were presented. According to the census, Airdrie has a population of 85,805, which is a 6.39 per cent growth rate since the 2023 municipal census. This is an...
discoverairdrie.com discoverairdrie.com
 
Robo said:
Holy cow, 85K for Airdrie. It won't be long before it's over 100K.
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Man, I really wish our suburban cities had any historical core or identity of significance to build off of. 85,000 people is no joke and it's pure auto-dominated 1990s-style sprawl designs in 100% of the community. At least most suburban Toronto and Vancouver satellite cities had a real historic core or town centre to focus ... anything.

All our satellite town and cities had such a negligible walkable historic node to start with, they were all so easily overwhelmed by Calgary suburban designs of wide swooping boulevards and pure auto-dependence.
 
Airdrie does have a downtown master plan they want to implement, not sure if there is a timeline yet. But yeah, in it's current state it's just a typically boring Calgary neighbourhood that isn't in the city haha.

How big are Okotoks and Cochrane? both still claim to be a town with probably 30-40 000 people lol.
 
CBBarnett said:
Man, I really wish our suburban cities had any historical core or identity of significance to build off of. 85,000 people is no joke and it's pure auto-dominated 1990s-style sprawl designs in 100% of the community. At least most suburban Toronto and Vancouver satellite cities had a real historic core or town centre to focus ... anything.

All our satellite town and cities had such a negligible walkable historic node to start with, they were all so easily overwhelmed by Calgary suburban designs of wide swooping boulevards and pure auto-dependence.
Click to expand...
Here's a historical snapshot, with 1961 and 1986 populations. (All data federal Census obviously.) 1961 is a reasonable proxy for the start of the car age; it's old enough that getting Census data is a real pain (so I don't have most of the numbers). 1986 is conveniently when Calgary was half the population it is today, so that seems like a good proxy.

1720120912807.png


Airdrie was 10K in 1986, but that was almost entirely built up over the previous 10 years; it was 1408 in 1976. High River is the town in the area with the largest actual historic core (which is also true if you go visit, in my impression).

Here's the town growth, with Calgary on the other axis as a comparison:
1720121535536.png
 
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Thanks for posting @ByeByeBaby , great dataset. Confirms my suspicion that essentially there was close to zero historic walkable nodes beyond Calgary to even cling too.

This is structurally different than places like Vancouver or Toronto that not only had a larger pre-war centre city, but also had multiple satellite cities of substantial populations also built pre-war. It didn't prevent all their problems - cars dominate almost everywhere, highways cut through neighbourhoods - but certainly led to different outcomes and a more mixed political environment where things like walkable neighbourhoods and main streets were not seen as "new" ideas, but a much more obvious part of the existing fabric that many championed the whole time through.

The urban v. car-oriented suburban friction that was caused by a more complicated, less-blank-slate reality when cars began really taking over, percolated and compromised down into really basic stuff about how Vancouver and Toronto work to this day. For example, current standards in Toronto and Vancouver that allow for narrow streets and lanes, good crosswalk design, tighter/slower turn geometry on all roads were outcomes of this debate.

Calgary, and even moreso it's suburbs, had very little of this friction during this era and it shows.
 
CBBarnett said:
Thanks for posting @ByeByeBaby , great dataset. Confirms my suspicion that essentially there was close to zero historic walkable nodes beyond Calgary to even cling too.

This is structurally different than places like Vancouver or Toronto that not only had a larger pre-war centre city, but also had multiple satellite cities of substantial populations also built pre-war. It didn't prevent all their problems - cars dominate almost everywhere, highways cut through neighbourhoods - but certainly led to different outcomes and a more mixed political environment where things like walkable neighbourhoods and main streets were not seen as "new" ideas, but a much more obvious part of the existing fabric that many championed the whole time through.

The urban v. car-oriented suburban friction that was caused by a more complicated, less-blank-slate reality when cars began really taking over, percolated and compromised down into really basic stuff about how Vancouver and Toronto work to this day. For example, current standards in Toronto and Vancouver that allow for narrow streets and lanes, good crosswalk design, tighter/slower turn geometry on all roads were outcomes of this debate.

Calgary, and even moreso it's suburbs, had very little of this friction during this era and it shows.
Click to expand...
To be fair, the numbers I posted are a little misleading, since it seems like in 1961 High River was the second largest town in the Calgary area; in fact, it was the fourth largest (fifth largest if you include Olds, which I think is too far away to be really considered part of the Calgary area). Here's the 1961 Census:
1720546944587.png


The #2, #3 and #4 towns, Forest Lawn, Bowness and Montogmery are no longer their own thing, and are instead part of Calgary. So we do have a little bit of that streetcar suburbanism, but it's just been incorporated into Calgary proper through annexation.

Interestingly, the populations in 2021 of these three areas are:
Bowness - 10770 (17% higher than 1961)
Montgomery - 4175 (18% lower than 1961)
Forest Lawn - 13128 (7% higher) in the area that was in Forest Lawn in 1961 (the current communities of Forest Lawn, Southview and Albert Park/Radisson Heights -- excluding the part of AP/RH north of 8 St SE)
 
A change from the usual for June housing starts. Montreal is the leader, while for the second straight month (and 4 of the last 6) Calgary is ahead of Vancouver.
CitySFHsemirowapartmenttotal
Montreal121163727882962
Toronto3241033421792847
Calgary7192103077301966
Vancouver30010422311401475
Edmonton7371002443941830
Quebec68308723829
Halifax9738313344792
Winnipeg1303617496679
Ott/Gat18421237229671
 
Toronto and Vancouver have been slowing down for the past 6 months or so. High cost plus slowdown in international immigration would be my guess.
 
I find it consistently shocking how sluggish the Ottawa market seems to be, given that their metro is only a couple hundred thousand smaller than ours. Are they just not experiencing the population explosion that the rest of the federation is?

We’re less than 900 housing starts behind Toronto, but nearly 1300 ahead of Ottawa? Wild.
 
Cities seem to go through ebs and flows. For a while Montreal was the main laggard. Winnipeg has had times where they are less than half of Halifax, but picked up last month...probably due to a single project that started. Ottawa on the Ontario side has been very slow for quite a while now, and I have my theories on why.

When I get some time to kill, I'm going to make a graph showing that last couple of years. Calgary is probably the most consistent of all the metros over the past 2 years, with starts climbing but no real bursts or drops. Maybe due to so many smaller apartment style projects, row homes, and duplexes?
 
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