[OttoSchloss]

It's so interesting that Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix are growing so quickly. I've heard nothing but horror stories about how hot it is down there and how trashy the people are. And WHO would want to live in Atlanta? One of the most dangerous cities in the US. Nothing good ever came out of Atlanta.

I honestly take it with a grain of salt as well because I've heard so many different predictions of how big Toronto will be. There's a page on the Ontario government website that says it'll have a metro area of 7.7 million by 2025.

Coca Cola and Scarlett O'Hara!

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I would say Chicago is good example of a "Titanic" situation as well.

Chicago's not sinking/shrinking, though. Syracuse is. Detroit is, too.

Coca Cola and Scarlett O'Hara!

Also, new diseases and outbreaks are a boon for Atlanta...the CDC studies them, while CNN makes sure we're all suffciently scared and misinformed.

 

[Whoaccio]

The decline of the rustbelt cities is due to the decline of industry in the rustbelt and the decline of industry in the US and developed countries altogether. Industry tends to be located at the fringe anyways, so it has nothing to do with inner city racial conflict.

The decline of industry had relatively little to do with the rustbelt cities' present situation. After all, industry declined as a relative component of the economy is virtually every jurisdiction in developed countries, with a few exceptions, and, as you say, industrial activities were typically located away from inner cities anyways. The decline of inner cities was in large part because of racial tensions which were peculiar to those particular cities.

Do you really think the decline of Hamilton and the Niagara Penisula is due to racial conflict as well? Come on...

Neither of those cities has really "declined." Hamilton's population has had stagnant periods and overall lower growth rates than national averages. In the US, it's not uncommon for cities to have lost 50% of their population. East St. Louis has lost over 65% of its 1950s population. Despite deindustrialization similar to what parts of the US has experienced, I'm unaware of any Canadian city which has undergone such protracted and terminal population declines. The major difference is we never had to deploy the army to stop ethnic group x from killing ethnic group y. Even Windsor, the poster child of Canadian deindustrialization, looks like Switzerland next to Detroit.

EDIT: I should also point out that of the top 10 US cities with the highest proportion of African-Americans, at least half are Sunbelt cities. Also, the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest proportion of African-Americans are ALL Sunbelt cities.

So? Most of those cities are notorious for their poverty and violence. Just because a city is in the "sunbelt" doesn't mean it is nice. New Orleans rivals Detroit for the title of America's worst city. They were also relatively unaffected by deindustrialization, yet still continue to be examples of failed American cities.

My original point was that Canadians have a habit of looking at cities like Detroit or Newark and then reasoning that it was (insert favored policy) that stopped Toronto or Ottawa from ending up like them. In reality, the social conditions of the two were wildly different. Canada was, until recently, a fairly homogeneous country. We have no historical parallel to the Civil Rights movement and the ongoing racial disparities in the USA. This is one of the major driving forces of American society, and one of the main reasons Detroit has more in common with Johannesburg than Toronto. In cases where the low concentrations of African Americans rendered civil rights a non-issue, urban development has been roughly identical to Canada. Comparisons between Canadian and American cities which fail to recognize the incendiary history of American race relations aren't worth typing.

 

[Second_in_pie]

I think that Toronto's very different from any other North American city, especially in terms of population. If you look at the GTA and Toronto's CMA compared to Metro areas of US cities, you'll see a significant underplaying of our population. Our CMA population is listed at 5.1 million, less than the population of the GTA, and about 3 million less than the population of the Greater Golden Horseshoe. If you look at a city like Los Angles, their metro area is huge, about as large as the GGH. And a very large part of the GGH is still rural, there are even a lot of parts of the GTA that are mostly farmland, just look at York, Durham and Halton, all of which I'd say are over 50% rural or just at the fringe.

I definitely believe it when people say that the GTA will grow to over 7 million by 2025, meaning the GGH will be well over 10 million people. The region must be one of the fastest growing in North America, and there's definitely even more potential for growth in population, economics and culture.

 

[Whoaccio]

Growth rate is one thing but how many cities in North America are adequately accommodating this new growth? Likely none, ergo our cities are largely not getting better as they get bigger. The greatest improvement in standard of living and amenities is occuring largely in neighbourhoods that are not fast growing. Growth in the city regions we are talking about is largely concentrated in autocentric neighbourhoods offering the lowest levels of services and amenities in the regions (example: Brampton)

Getting better for who? At the risk of generalizing, the immigrant who moves to Brampton from Punjab probably sees a major increase in their standard of living.

I don't think Toronto should be happy about beating out a third world desert, but at the same time I think growth itself should be taken as a sign of progress. Nothing indicates pride and confidence in a City like picking up your things and moving there. Though we need to be careful not to swamp infrastructure, we should also be careful not to fall into the position of seeking to maximize the standard of living of the Earth's richest at the expense of shutting poorer people out. That's my beef for most European cities. American cities like Phoenix or Albuquerque are a place of major upwards mobility for Mexicans and of remissions to Latin America in a way that cities like Oslo or Vienna simply aren't.

 

[newuser2k9]

Getting better for who? At the risk of generalizing, the immigrant who moves to Brampton from Punjab probably sees a major increase in their standard of living.

I don't think Toronto should be happy about beating out a third world desert, but at the same time I think growth itself should be taken as a sign of progress. Nothing indicates pride and confidence in a City like picking up your things and moving there. Though we need to be careful not to swamp infrastructure, we should also be careful not to fall into the position of seeking to maximize the standard of living of the Earth's richest at the expense of shutting poorer people out. That's my beef for most European cities. American cities like Phoenix or Albuquerque are a place of major upwards mobility for Mexicans and of remissions to Latin America in a way that cities like Oslo or Vienna simply aren't.

While partly true, major infrastructure investments in Europe like public transit, etc, are a boon for lower income residents. The European Union has a much lower income disparity than even Canada, so public realm improvements benefit everyone.

 

[unimaginative2]

That's a bit of a stereotype. Houston is a major beacon for professionals. It has the most Fortune 500 HQs of any US city outside NYC, the Texas Medical Center is arguably the largest medical research center on Earth, NASA's Space Center & the United Space Launch Alliance make it arguably the most important City for aerospace development and its pretty much the king of energy and petrochemicals. There are over 60 universities or colleges with 350+ thousand students enrolled.

And median home prices are only like 170k. So it's really not that surprising it has such high growth. The same for Atlanta, which has the 3rd most Fortune 500 HQs after NYC & Houston with median home prices of only 150k. Would I want to live in these cities? Not necessarily, but I get the feeling the type of people who live in Portland or Boston simply discredit them without looking at why they attract so many people, including the people in fields who are supposed to like Portland (i.e. professionals & college grads).

Interesting points, though a couple small issues. Chicago and the Bay Area both have more than Houston, and Atlanta is way down on the list. Nowhere near third. Houston is also no Seattle or Toulouse when it comes to Aerospace. For that matter, I wouldn't put it on par with L.A. or Montreal. Probably more comparable to Wichita.

 

[unimaginative2]

Toronto is a very fast growing city compared to the US rustbelt/snowbelt cities that it is surrounded by. Toronto is an anomaly in the rustbelt/snowbelt area because its rate of growth is much more like that of a sunbelt city. And if you look at the actual form of that growth, you can also find many similarities between Toronto and the sunbelt cities. Lets face it, in all cases most of the growth has taken place in the suburbs, and the suburbs in Toronto are much more similar to the suburbs of cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix than they are to the suburbs of Chicago or New York.

If you're trying to suggest that our suburbs are sprawlier than the suburbs of Chicago or New York, you...haven't been to the suburbs of Chicago or New York. Toronto's suburbs are much more densely populated than the suburbs of any American city with the possible exception of a few suburbs of L.A. and a few places like White Plains and Tysons.

The massive difference between Toronto's growth and Sunbelt growth is that ours is mostly international immigration. Our growth rate over the next 20 years will be almost entirely a function of Canada's immigrant intake.

The decline of industry had relatively little to do with the rustbelt cities' present situation. After all, industry declined as a relative component of the economy is virtually every jurisdiction in developed countries, with a few exceptions, and, as you say, industrial activities were typically located away from inner cities anyways. The decline of inner cities was in large part because of racial tensions which were peculiar to those particular cities.

You're absolutely right about inner cities, but we're talking about metro areas here. L.A. has had as many racial problems as any rust belt city, and it has a weak inner city at least partly because of it, but its metro area is still growing rapidly.

Neither of those cities has really "declined." Hamilton's population has had stagnant periods and overall lower growth rates than national averages. In the US, it's not uncommon for cities to have lost 50% of their population. East St. Louis has lost over 65% of its 1950s population. Despite deindustrialization similar to what parts of the US has experienced, I'm unaware of any Canadian city which has undergone such protracted and terminal population declines. The major difference is we never had to deploy the army to stop ethnic group x from killing ethnic group y. Even Windsor, the poster child of Canadian deindustrialization, looks like Switzerland next to Detroit.

Again, you're confusing cities and metropolitan areas here. Certainly many U.S. cities (usually with racial problems and/or massive deindustrialization) have seen tremendous declines (greater than 50%) in their core municipality. No major metro area has seen declines remotely approaching that. There are very few metropolitan areas in the U.S. that can actually be said to be shrinking. Some of the smaller rust belt cities and possibly Detroit.

The comments about our CMA are all quite accurate. Toronto CMA is much smaller than the metropolitan areas of major American cities. That's why Toronto fails to include some of its fastest-growing municipalities (i.e. Barrie).

 

[Whoaccio]

Interesting points, though a couple small issues. Chicago and the Bay Area both have more than Houston, and Atlanta is way down on the list. Nowhere near third. Houston is also no Seattle or Toulouse when it comes to Aerospace. For that matter, I wouldn't put it on par with L.A. or Montreal. Probably more comparable to Wichita.

My information was a bit out of date. The list I quoted was from 2007. (1. NYC, 2 Houston, 3 Atlanta, 4 Chicago, 5 Dallas). The 2009 Fortune 500 rankings aren't much different, though (1 NYC, 2 Houston, 3 Dallas, Atlanta & Chicago tied at 4&5).

Being the home to the Space Center, NASA's largest facility, clearly places Houston as one of the World's premier aerospace locations. Boeing's also gradually leaving Washington. Ever since they bought McDonnell Douglas they have been moving towards the US interior. Just last week, due specifically to labor tensions in Washington, they announced they were going to build a parallel 787 assembly facility in South Carolina.

None of this is to say that Houston is the be all and end all of employment opportunities, but if you listen to nobody but Richard Florida, one would think that the Houston economy is based on nothing but Arby's franchisees and rodeo stadium staff. In fact census data shows Houston (as well as cities like Austin & Dallas) has become one of the biggest importers of college graduates in the USA and there are no shortage of surveys ranking it among the best places for college graduates to locate. This is despite a total lack of the amenities that some urban thinkers suggest are key to urban growth.

While partly true, major infrastructure investments in Europe like public transit, etc, are a boon for lower income residents. The European Union has a much lower income disparity than even Canada, so public realm improvements benefit everyone.

I'm a bit skeptical about infrastructure's economic benefits writ large*, but I don't think I suggested anything like that earlier. Immigration and infrastructure spending don't have any direct correlation in my mind.

*Or, at least, there is a point of diminishing returns with infrastructure. I think you get cases like Japan, where all manner of useless infrastructure projects get funded. Airports built in the ocean to handle nonexistent traffic, the world's longest tunnel built to connect a sparsely populated island, bullet trains to nowhere, highways to nowhere on top of that, needles dams and all manner of other project. Most of these projects have surprisingly low value to society, and just ended up giving the Japanese a nearly 200% debt/gdp ratio. On the other end of the spectrum is a place like Lagos, where there is clearly a lack of infrastructure. Toronto, I think, has a good middle point.

 

[adma]

And WHO would want to live in Atlanta? One of the most dangerous cities in the US. Nothing good ever came out of Atlanta.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

My information was a bit out of date. The list I quoted was from 2007. (1. NYC, 2 Houston, 3 Atlanta, 4 Chicago, 5 Dallas). The 2009 Fortune 500 rankings aren't much different, though (1 NYC, 2 Houston, 3 Dallas, Atlanta & Chicago tied at 4&5).

Out of date isn't the problem...those rankings are for cities, not metro areas.

 

[Whoaccio]

Out of date isn't the problem...those rankings are for cities, not metro areas.

Which is why I said cities.... not "vaguely defined geographically amorphous unit of measurement."

EDIT: Even if you look at MSAs, the "MSAs" with the most growth are still more or less the same grouping of Texas cities (Houston, Dallas, Austin) and a smattering of flyover country cities, plus Seattle. .

 

[unimaginative2]

But that's not what this whole thread is about. It's meaningless to talk about arbitrary historic municipal boundaries when you're trying to examine economic activity. A company headquartered in Pasadena or Beverly Hills is clearly part of the Los Angeles economy, a company in Redmond is clearly part of Seattle and a company in Irving is clearly a part of Dallas/Fort Worth. For that matter, a company in Mississauga is clearly part of Toronto's economic area. Houston is only high on that list because its historical municipality comprises more of the metro area. Is Calgary actually bigger than Vancouver? Is Louisville bigger than Miami or Minneapolis?

Toronto was clearly the fastest growing city on the continent in 1998. It grew by 300% in one year!

I'm not trying to say that it's unreasonable to talk about historical cities. It's just not what we're talking about here and it's not really relevant when you're talking about the economies of urban areas. What you're saying about Houston is very valid. It doesn't have the kinds of trendy urban amenities and yet it still is successful. I guess one way to look at it is that the Florida (Richard) approach to growth is one route, attracting people through diversity and urbanity and edginess, while the Florida (state) approach is another, attracting people with wide open space, plentiful jobs, lots of parking, and a nice climate.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Which is why I said cities.... not "vaguely defined geographically amorphous unit of measurement."

And a city isn't? What's stopping Toronto from annexing York, Durham and Peel? What stopped Harris from confining "Toronto" to the six boroughs rather than Mississauga as well? Why wasn't Scarborough given to Durham? Why didn't north york become part of York Region? Why wasn't Thornhill included in Toronto, or at least as it's own municipality, instead of being part of Markham and Vaughan as it is today?

I'd in fact call cities even more vaguely defined geographically amorphous units of measurement than metropolitan areas. Metro areas you can at least analyze population and commuting patterns, and form off that an idea as to how one area ties in with the nodal centre. You can create a cutoff or standards as to how dependent the surrounding area is to the core economy, whether it be the downtown district itself, or also off the suburbs of that downtown district. Right now, there's really no strong definition around what a metropolitan area is.

But I'd call the GGH one single metropolitan area, as all the components supplement each other; the GTA cities work together and are held by Toronto, Hamilton has evolved on it's own, but gets a lot of workers from the GTA's population, and the GGH's density is allowing it to grow. Niagara is connected to Hamilton, as well as being a/the important local tourism area for the region. K-W and Guelph's populations commute to a lot of GTA suburbs for work, and they are also able to establish themselves as separate but close centers for doing business. Barrie is a direct bedroom community to Toronto, and Peterborough is also a major area for local tourism.

 

[Northern Light]

Not to vary too far off topic.

Nor to be hyperbolic in any fashion.

But I think a cursory review of U.S. finances suggests that that country is facing the likelihood of extreme tax hikes in the foreseeable, indeed near future.

Given that overall, U.S. tax rates for individuals and businesses are broadly in line with Canadian rates (lower in most low-tax states, higher or identical in high tax ones).....

I would presuppose that the hikes necessary to bring U.S. Federal and state budgets even close to balance far exceed those that may be required in our own country. We're not only looking at direct government debt here; but massive 'unfunded' liabilities like those U.S Social Security ( the American version of CPP) which is, for all intents and purposes verging on insolvency.

Comparing that with current and proposed Canadian levels of tax, I would be wary of the assumption that there will be much net population growth in the U.S. in the next while.

While obviously city to city numbers will vary, I would also posit that oil has already resumed its course to $80.00 a barrel and beyond; that U.S. gas taxes and/or tolls will be raised substantially whenever the next U.S. highway spending authorization is passed (which is the reason the Obama administration is trying to defer the bill into 2011, after the next Congressional election) and the proposed U.S. climate change/energy bill, which could raise U.S gas prices by and energy prices in general by 15% or more.....

I think the U.S. has a great deal to concerned about.

I also this more suburban oriented cities in the U.S. may have more to be worried about.

I neither wish to be alarmist, nor to gloat on behalf of our own country which will surely feel some of the impact of a severe U.S economic challenge, but I nonetheless, view the likelihood of substantial U.S.
population growth (or economic growth as improbable, in the near term.)

We needn't add that many U.S. sunbelt Cities are running dangerously low of water....(Atlanta and San Diego for starters)

****

While Canada will also suffer in some measure from both the U.S. circumstances, and from its own fiscal challenges, there are solid reasons to believe that our fortunes will be somewhat better than those to the south.

While not to the direct benefit of Ontario, once again rising energy prices will play right into Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland oil coffers; should natural gas rise, as I expect it will, this further benefits the North and Nova Scotia.

Quebec, having now acquired NB Power, will be in a position to export comparatively cheap 'green power' to levels never before seen to the U.S. via NB transmission lines; and will undoubtedly reach a deal on Churchill Falls phase II with Newfoundland that will make money for both jurisdictions.

Ontario will see less direct benefit, but in light on the increased Federal Resources, and the healthier state of other provincial economies, look for reduced equalization over time to other regions and full and fair core program funding to Ontario.

This will be assured through the vast number of new seats being added to Ontario in Parliament.

Between that, and a variety of major public and private sector investments.

The most solid banks in the Developed world.

And I suspect a prospective Free Trade Deal with the E.U.....

I think Toronto and Ontario will fare reasonably well overall.

Of course, I have no more a crystal ball than anyone else.......I'm just saying.