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I'm sorry but I think you have mistaken your opinions as facts. Anyway I think I've made my case for the QOL and standard of living of Canadian cities including Toronto. Creating a hypothetical world is nonsensical.. even if we play along with your hypothetical (though somehow you have the audacity to transfer to factual) play along - i'd say the open border would play to T.O's favour as much as it would against... large swaths of U.S citizens who identify with stronger communities in T.O would probably emigrate to Toronto... so no I don't think we'd lose and possibly swell even more.
As for the whole Montreal/Toronto thing as someone else stated before so what? Seriously what is done is done and Montreal is no longer the biggest and most important city in Canada who cares the reason(s) why at this point!? It happened in the 1970's which is four decades ago!!! Regardless if Montreal was in a similar position as Toronto currently is and projected to be, i'm sure it would find enough Americans in CD more than willing to lob hypothetical grenades at it.
As for anti-Toronto feeling in Toronto itself - strange so why live here if you hate it lol.... why is the city one of the fastest growing in N.A.... sorry but this sounds ridiculous doesn't it? The only anti-Toronto sentiment I have right now is that it's still chilly for the beginning of March...
Quote:
Originally Posted by midwest1
Stating FACTS is not ethnocentric.
Now let's imagine if the US and Canada had an EU-like agreement of freedom to move across borders without visas. Do you honestly NOT think a certain percentage of your fellow Torontonians might explore the option of living in NYC, Chicago, Miami, Charleston, Austin, San Diego, San Francisco, Honolulu, Portland, Los Angeles???
It is certainly possible that some Americans might make the reverse move to Toronto/Vancouver/Calgary, but my guess is Canada would most likely lose millions of migrants to points south. To deny that Toronto's current growth and dynamism is not related to limited choices in Canada is delusional. I mean even if Montreal/Quebec had not launched such an aggressive anti-English movement, my guess is Toronto might not be in such an advantageous position vis-a-vis Montreal.
By the way, I like Toronto more than most Canadians I have met Lotsa anti-Toronto feeling up there.
I'm not saying it can't i'm saying momentum and projections based on what is actually happening doesn't support your premise. Again let's move from hypothetical world to reality...
Toronto has solid credentials that aren't going to the wayside. We'll see in a decade who is right. I'm happy for the success of Chicago but Toronto has been gaining on that city for a looooong looooong time even when the economy of the U.S was soaring in the last two decades - why would that suddenly shift so dramatically in the next 5 years??
Quote:
Originally Posted by tawfiqmp
Taken from the locked thread.
Ehh, I disagree.
Like I said, Chicago pretty much hit a low over the last decade now or so along with Toronto's growth which is what it took to surpass it. I think if Chicago gets back to where it was thriving with the economy, housing market, etc. it can most certainly pass Toronto up again. Houston taking over Chicago's city population would be true at this point because of how things are going, but if anything changes for the positive for Chicago's city proper, then I would disagree and say vice versa that Chicago would definitely overtake Toronto, even with Toronto's continual growth. Just what I think though.
I posted this article in response to someone else but thought it provided excellent commentary on the recent discussions in the thread and deserved its own post.
I posted this article in response to someone else but thought it provided excellent commentary on the recent discussions in the thread and deserved its own post.
Good article. I like how the author expanded to make the physical areas equal. 1.6 million people for that is still a big difference. Also, for the 2011 estimate, Chicago MSA is estimated to have added around 270,000 people in just one year so might it be closer to 1.8-1.9 million difference?
Also, there are three counties in the Chicago MSA that are not that populated. Jasper County, IN, Grundy County, IL, and Newton County, IN. Population of these three counties is just 97,785 and the area is 3614 sq km. Density of 27 people per sq km. As the article states, there's no standard way of doing these things.
It says the Toronto metro area is 7125 sq km for about 6 million people. So if we make some continuous areas of the Chicago MSA like this, you'd have:
Cook County (where Chicago is) - 4230 sq km and 5,287,037 people.
DuPage County - 871 sq km and 932,541 people
Will County - 2199 sq km and 677,560 people
That's about 6.9 million, so still probably close to 800,000- 1 million people more in a similar physical area to Greater Toronto. Not major but still a lot of people.
I also like how it attempted to make a more apples to apples comparison. I've no doubt as an expanse Chicagoland is greater than the Greater Golden Horsehoe but it is not as large as some would have us believe.
Regardless, I don't think that Chicagoland will start to concentrate into the core like in the case of the GGH - nothing that I see points to this direction to the degree that is happening and is projected to happen in Toronto.
Another factor you must look at with TO's growth and environs is the heavy growth due to immigration.. If you look at the cultures of these immigrants, many support large families hence the growth rate for the native population will continue to grow strongly as well in the generations to come.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu
Good article. I like how the author expanded to make the physical areas equal. 1.6 million people for that is still a big difference. Also, for the 2011 estimate, Chicago MSA is estimated to have added around 270,000 people in just one year so might it be closer to 1.8-1.9 million difference?
Also, there are three counties in the Chicago MSA that are not that populated. Jasper County, IN, Grundy County, IL, and Newton County, IN. Population of these three counties is just 97,785 and the area is 3614 sq km. Density of 27 people per sq km. As the article states, there's no standard way of doing these things.
It says the Toronto metro area is 7125 sq km for about 6 million people. So if we make some continuous areas of the Chicago MSA like this, you'd have:
Cook County (where Chicago is) - 4230 sq km and 5,287,037 people.
DuPage County - 871 sq km and 932,541 people
Will County - 2199 sq km and 677,560 people
That's about 6.9 million, so still probably close to 800,000- 1 million people more in a similar physical area to Greater Toronto. Not major but still a lot of people.
I posted this article in response to someone else but thought it provided excellent commentary on the recent discussions in the thread and deserved its own post.
Good article. I like how the author expanded to make the physical areas equal. 1.6 million people for that is still a big difference. Also, for the 2011 estimate, Chicago MSA is estimated to have added around 270,000 people in just one year so might it be closer to 1.8-1.9 million difference?
Also, there are three counties in the Chicago MSA that are not that populated. Jasper County, IN, Grundy County, IL, and Newton County, IN. Population of these three counties is just 97,785 and the area is 3614 sq km. Density of 27 people per sq km. As the article states, there's no standard way of doing these things.
It says the Toronto metro area is 7125 sq km for about 6 million people. So if we make some continuous areas of the Chicago MSA like this, you'd have:
Cook County (where Chicago is) - 4230 sq km and 5,287,037 people.
DuPage County - 871 sq km and 932,541 people
Will County - 2199 sq km and 677,560 people
That's about 6.9 million, so still probably close to 800,000- 1 million people more in a similar physical area to Greater Toronto. Not major but still a lot of people.
Yes, good article, But the problem with this and many other comparisons that I have seen bandied about online is that they jump from a frame of reference that is too small (city proper) to one that is way too big (MSA, CSA or whatever you wanna call it).
The city proper comparison clearly doesn't tell the whole story. But jumping from that to a comparison of 30,000 sq km area makes even less logic because you are then looking at an area of such a huge size that it bears no reasonable connection to the actual urban size. And in the case of Chicago vs Toronto, blowing the comparison up to 30k sq km helps Toronto because it picks up a number of far flung towns to boost its population significantly, while doing little to help Chicago which has 90+% of its MSA population in a core area of about 2100 sq miles.
Therefore the appropriate comparison IMO is not MSA or CSA, but *urban area*. If Wiki is to be trusted, Chicago's urban area is 8.7m in 2100 sq miles. Toronto's population in an equivalent size area is estimated somewhere in the vicinity of 6.5m. So that's the difference - 2m to 2.5m - which is pretty significant.
The problem with this and many other comparisons that I have seen bandied about online is that they jump from a frame of reference that is too small (city proper) to one that is way too big (MSA, CSA or whatever you wanna call it).
The city proper comparison clearly doesn't tell the whole picture. But jumping from that to a comparison of 30,000 sq km area makes even less logic because you are then looking at an area of such a huge size that it bears no reasonable connection to the actual urban size. And in the case of Chicago vs Toronto, blowing the comparison up to 30k sq km helps Toronto because it picks up a number of far flung towns to boost its population significantly, while doing little to help Chicago which has 90+% of its MSA population in a core area of about 2100 sq miles.
Therefore the appropriate comparison IMO is not MSA or CSA, but *urban area*. If Wiki is to be trusted, Chicago's urban area is 8.7m in 2100 sq miles. Toronto's population in an equivalent size area is estimated somewhere in the vicinity of 6.5m. So that's the difference - 2m to 2.5m - which is pretty significant.
Yes this is a good point, but this is why I only included those three counties above out of 14 total counties in the MSA definition. Look at a map of Chicago and then cross reference those three counties there. You'll notice there's no interruption of populated places there until you get to the far reaches of DuPage County. It's one big population mass (I also didn't include Lake County which has a population of about 1 million but there's more green space there in reality than the other counties).
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