[Whoaccio]

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?

As far as US cities are concerned, it doesn't actually make all that much difference. No matter what level you look at American cities, the same patterns appear. Metropolitan Areas like Atlanta-Sandy Spring-Marietta, Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington or the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale lead the US by just as wide a margin in terms of job creation and population growth. (wiki). Even if you look at the state level a roughly similar, if more pixelated, picture appears. States like Texas and Arizona have been gaining population while states like New York, Illinois, New Jersey and, recently, California are losing population. You can argue about what the best level is to measure this trend, but it's obvious at just about every level.

I'd also add that Houston makes up less of its metropolitan area than Toronto makes up of the GTA. Greater Houston is about the size of Rwanda, which is partially why I am reluctant to consider it a discrete city.

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.

Well, the one problem I would point out statistically in all of this is the Richard Florida approach certainly makes distinctions within metropolitan areas. Mississauga is not Toronto in his books, nor is Burnaby Vancouver. To that end it's difficult to treat metropolitan areas as discrete units. With a few exceptions though, metropolitan areas like SanFran-Oakland-Freemont or Boston-Cambridge-Quincy have had quite low growth rates, most of which occurred in the outlying suburbs which typically wouldn't be considered Floridian.

 

[TrickyRicky]

"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 see your point and I'm a big advocate for taking in to consideration opportunity as a prime metric of the health of a city. As in, is this city a place of opportunity?

On the other hand getting better for whom means for the citizens of the city region. Our government, institutions, businesses etc. really should have no other goal but to improve the standard of living of people. To allow fast growth without accommodating it is a slum strategy regardless of if that slum happens to be middle-class. So we allow vast tracts of greenfield housing to be built with substandard levels of service and infrastructure relative to the rest of the region. This strikes me as coming close to growth for growth sake, or at least growth for the interests that stand to profit from it. I am not anti-growth, infact I'm an interest that stands to profit directly from it. But I really think we need to mature beyond the concept that growth in any form is always good or even always desirable at all.

 

[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 see your point and I'm a big advocate for taking in to consideration opportunity as a prime metric of the health of a city. As in, is this city a place of opportunity?

On the other hand getting better for whom means for the citizens of the city region. Our government, institutions, businesses etc. really should have no other goal but to improve the standard of living of people. To allow fast growth without accommodating it is a slum strategy regardless of if that slum happens to be middle-class. So we allow vast tracts of greenfield housing to be built with substandard levels of service and infrastructure relative to the rest of the region. This strikes me as coming close to growth for growth sake, or at least growth for the interests that stand to profit from it. I am not anti-growth, infact I'm an interest that stands to profit directly from it. But I really think we need to mature beyond the concept that growth in any form is always good or even always desirable at all.

A fair assumption, and one I totally agree with. Building suburbs has many added costs that are totally overlooked, like environmental costs, infrastructure costs, and others that will end up biting us back in the future. The best alternative is to have a government that actively seeks infrastructure and regulations to maintain some sense of order in the boom period we are going through.

Our population will keep growing, people, eventually past 60 million and above. By letting our country essentially double in population, without any control over it, will lead us to a scenario much like that facing the new Asian superpowers, but on a smaller scale. It's time we put the suburbs in check and focused on a plan of smart development of existing areas, with very incremental increases in city limits. Most of all, we need a public transit system that lives up to it's promise of a 'better way' and mimics that of the European capitals. Just because we're on a different continent doesn't mean our challenges aren't the same.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

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

Then you know how silly it is to compare Atlanta to, say, LA, without including companies located throughout the metro area, including places like El Segundo that are hardly considered suburbs.

As far as US cities are concerned, it doesn't actually make all that much difference. No matter what level you look at American cities, the same patterns appear. Metropolitan Areas like Atlanta-Sandy Spring-Marietta, Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington or the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale lead the US by just as wide a margin in terms of job creation and population growth.

Doesn't make much difference? The SF Bay area has more than twice as many Fortune 500 HQs as the entire state of Georgia.

States like Texas and Arizona have been gaining population while states like New York, Illinois, New Jersey and, recently, California are losing population. You can argue about what the best level is to measure this trend, but it's obvious at just about every level.

California is not losing population. Are you looking just at domestic migration stats?

I'd also add that Houston makes up less of its metropolitan area than Toronto makes up of the GTA. Greater Houston is about the size of Rwanda, which is partially why I am reluctant to consider it a discrete city.

Well, the one problem I would point out statistically in all of this is the Richard Florida approach certainly makes distinctions within metropolitan areas. Mississauga is not Toronto in his books, nor is Burnaby Vancouver. To that end it's difficult to treat metropolitan areas as discrete units. With a few exceptions though, metropolitan areas like SanFran-Oakland-Freemont or Boston-Cambridge-Quincy have had quite low growth rates, most of which occurred in the outlying suburbs which typically wouldn't be considered Floridian.

If Toronto was an American sun belt city, we'd have long ago annexed Brampton, or annexed a sliver of land along Bayview and gobbled up Richmond Hill, or Markham may have applied to be taken over by Toronto, etc. Then, our 'central city' would receive a large share of today's outlying suburban growth. That's the *only* reason municipalities like Houston and Phoenix are still rapidly growing.

For a lark, someone in Toronto should apply to have Phoenix annex their Canadian property...here's the application site: http://phoenix.gov/CITYCLERK/annexappl.pdf

 

[kettal]

A fair assumption, and one I totally agree with. Building suburbs has many added costs that are totally overlooked, like environmental costs, infrastructure costs, and others that will end up biting us back in the future. The best alternative is to have a government that actively seeks infrastructure and regulations to maintain some sense of order in the boom period we are going through.

Our population will keep growing, people, eventually past 60 million and above. By letting our country essentially double in population, without any control over it, will lead us to a scenario much like that facing the new Asian superpowers, but on a smaller scale. It's time we put the suburbs in check and focused on a plan of smart development of existing areas, with very incremental increases in city limits. Most of all, we need a public transit system that lives up to it's promise of a 'better way' and mimics that of the European capitals. Just because we're on a different continent doesn't mean our challenges aren't the same.

The kind of growth the GTA experienced in the 70s-90s was really a false economy. The developers had little incentive to consider the impacts of their decisions on the future residents, and worst of all the municipalities and province were complacent (no surprise given where their campaign contributions were coming from).

It was a ponzi scheme, and a lot of crooks came out rich.

 

[hbl33]

A fair assumption, and one I totally agree with. Building suburbs has many added costs that are totally overlooked, like environmental costs, infrastructure costs, and others that will end up biting us back in the future. The best alternative is to have a government that actively seeks infrastructure and regulations to maintain some sense of order in the boom period we are going through.

Our population will keep growing, people, eventually past 60 million and above. By letting our country essentially double in population, without any control over it, will lead us to a scenario much like that facing the new Asian superpowers, but on a smaller scale. It's time we put the suburbs in check and focused on a plan of smart development of existing areas, with very incremental increases in city limits. Most of all, we need a public transit system that lives up to it's promise of a 'better way' and mimics that of the European capitals. Just because we're on a different continent doesn't mean our challenges aren't the same.

I wished that it would be true, but mimic-ing European system? Isn't that just Euro-envy rather than developing the system equivalent to European standards? IS Europe at top of the world in everything? I mean, they developed their transit systems through adaptations to their history, culture and geography rather than copy and pasting the things that North American cities are doing. I thought adoping Asian models would make sense too, if it is to just mimic from another continent.

 

[Second_in_pie]

I wished that it would be true, but mimic-ing European system? Isn't that just Euro-envy rather than developing the system equivalent to European standards? IS Europe at top of the world in everything? I mean, they developed their transit systems through adaptations to their history, culture and geography rather than copy and pasting the things that North American cities are doing. I thought adoping Asian models would make sense too, if it is to just mimic from another continent.

I agree, and the way the GGH is growing, it might make more sense for the current Asian models that are designed for rapid growth.

 

[adma]

I agree, and the way the GGH is growing, it might make more sense for the current Asian models that are designed for rapid growth.

With reservations. After all, Toronto over-mimicking Asia overly self-consciously could come off a la Europe over-mimicking North America (cf. La Defense).

At most, save it for tabula rasas a la Downtown Mississauga...

 

[doady]

Just to clarify:

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.

Sorry for the confusion. I was actually saying that our suburbs are denser. I just pointing out yet another similarity between Toronto and the Sunbelt cities, which have denser suburbs than the suburbs of Chicago and New York. Chicago may be sprawling immensely, but there is little population growth.

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.

That's exactly what I was saying. Racial issue are mostly an inner city problem, so I am not sure what exactly it has to do with overall lack of population growth in rust belt areas compared to sun belt areas, especially when sunbelt areas have had major racial tension as well.

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.

I thought it was clear when I made reference to the growth of the suburbs that I was talking about the growth of metropolitan areas as whole. Though my argument does make some sense when comparing just the inner cities as well, so I can understand the confusion.