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While County-level GDP is not measured, Cook county is responsible for ~56% of the Chicago area's personal income, it's GDP is likely in the ~$350 billion range, likely similar to metro Toronto.
Metro Detroit does have a larger economy than Metro Vienna, but most of it's income is not generated in Wayne county or the city itself, but Oakland county. Metro Detroit has more people as well.
I understand economics enough to know what GDP is.
Yeah, within Canada, Toronto is actually a bigger player economically and demographically than NYC is in the U.S.
It has a much larger share of the country's population in its metro and in the immediate vicinity than NYC does.
This is true, but it's also true for Montreal compared to NYC. Canada has a smaller population, so obviously a big city will have a larger share of national population and wealth, just like, say, Budapest is much more important in Hungary than Toronto is in Canada. Even Vancouver has a somewhat comparable share of population and wealth as compared to NYC.
While countries can have billion+ people, cities tend to top out at around 25-30 million, regardless of national population. It isn't like Shanghai will have 300 million people because it's in a more populous country than Tokyo.
fun fact of the day, Buffalo was 899k in 1950 so Toronto wasn't much larger than Buffalo.... Of course Buffalo hasn't grown at all in ~60 years it's 913k today. Buffalo probably had a larger economy as well.
While County-level GDP is not measured, Cook county is responsible for ~56% of the Chicago area's personal income, it's GDP is likely in the ~$350 billion range, likely similar to metro Toronto.
Metro Detroit does have a larger economy than Metro Vienna, but most of it's income is not generated in Wayne county or the city itself, but Oakland county. Metro Detroit has more people as well.
I understand economics enough to know what GDP is.
you should know nominal GDP is very misleading. So CAD declined by 20% in one year, does that mean the Canadian output is 20% lower and people are 20% poorer? It would be true only if Canada imports 100% of what it needs at home.
Put this difference aside it is still extremely dangerous to think: because country A has 20% higher GDP per capita than B, then country A must be 20% richer and have a better life. The truth is far from that simple. GDP itself is not an accurate measurement with so many flaws, and it is also just one economists use, far from an ideal one. I remember a few years ago China revised up its GDP by 16%. It happens all the time.
One also has to consider how efficient money is spent. For example, the US spends almost twice as much of money on healthcare per person than Canada, however, not only is healthcare far more costly in the US, but also 35 million people are not covered, why is that? Because most of money are earned by insurance companies. Most Americans didn't benefit that much for the high spending by the government.
I am not saying GDP is useless, but at least among developed countries, the nominal difference usually doesn't mean the difference we think it does.
The first couple of years after I moved to Canada, I did think the US is much richer and people are probably better off (because wages seem higher, price is lower, even streets are wider), but then I realize that's a very superficial way of looking at things. There are so many factors and a few economic indices don't even come close to explain the differences.
fun fact of the day, Buffalo was 899k in 1950 so Toronto wasn't much larger than Buffalo.... Of course Buffalo hasn't grown at all in ~60 years it's 913k today. Buffalo probably had a larger economy as well.
We have been through this on this forum. That urban Chicago covers a far larger area than the urban Toronto the number is supposed to represent. For example, on Wikipedia, metro Chicago has 9.5million people, versus 5.6m for Toronto. But if you look closer, metro Chicago includes 28000 sq km, while Toronto has 5900 sq km. Your number probably shows the same difference in terms of size of land.
If a city needs to span over such vast land with very low density pure residential communities to appear big, I will say "no thank you". I prefer compact with less suburbs. This is calculated by people on density of NA cities (metro area). Chicago has 60% of Toronto's density.
It is safe to say among the 9.5m people "Chicago" boast, half of that probably seldom enter the Chicago city boundary, not to mention the city centre because their life is somewhere else, could be as far as 70 miles away, and adds very little to the vibrancy of Chicago.
This is true, but it's also true for Montreal compared to NYC. Canada has a smaller population, so obviously a big city will have a larger share of national population and wealth, just like, say, Budapest is much more important in Hungary than Toronto is in Canada. Even Vancouver has a somewhat comparable share of population and wealth as compared to NYC.
While countries can have billion+ people, cities tend to top out at around 25-30 million, regardless of national population. It isn't like Shanghai will have 300 million people because it's in a more populous country than Tokyo.
Yep, but I bet there will be a few 40-50 million person cities in India and Africa by 2050 (Lagos, Mumbai, Delhi, etc), but not much larger.
There are a few large mega-agglomerations/megalopolises in the 60m range, but they aren't considered one urban area because they don't have one labor market. Bos-Wash, Yangtze and Pearl river deltas(Shanghai-Suzhou-Wuxi, and Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou-Foshan), and Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto are all in the 45-60m range.
While Toronto is a larger share of Canada's economy than NYC is of the US, Metro NYC has a larger economy than the whole of Canada.
This is true, but it's also true for Montreal compared to NYC. Canada has a smaller population, so obviously a big city will have a larger share of national population and wealth, just like, say, Budapest is much more important in Hungary than Toronto is in Canada. Even Vancouver has a somewhat comparable share of population and wealth as compared to NYC.
While countries can have billion+ people, cities tend to top out at around 25-30 million, regardless of national population. It isn't like Shanghai will have 300 million people because it's in a more populous country than Tokyo.
If it wasn't for the "French thing", Canada might have been more ripe for being dominated by one big megacity, Ã la Buenos Aires.
We have been through this on this forum. That urban Chicago covers a far larger area than the urban Toronto the number is supposed to represent. For example, on Wikipedia, metro Chicago has 9.5million people, versus 5.6m for Toronto. But if you look closer, metro Chicago includes 28000 sq km, while Toronto has 5900 sq km. Your number probably shows the same difference in terms of size of land.
If a city needs to span over such vast land with very low density pure residential communities to appear big, I will say "no thank you". I prefer compact with less suburbs. This is calculated by people on density of NA cities (metro area). Chicago has 60% of Toronto's density.
It is safe to say among the 9.5m people "Chicago" boast, half of that probably seldom enter the Chicago city boundary, not to mention the city centre because their life is somewhere else, could be as far as 70 miles away, and adds very little to the vibrancy of Chicago.
Metro areas are calculated on a county-basis. Chicago's metro area does include a lot of corn fields... Demographia measures urban areas via satellite imagery and estimates the Chicago urban area at 9,185,000 in 2,647 square miles. Toronto is 6,550,000 in 883 square miles.
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Toronto is more dense than Chicago, yes, but as it gets wealthier and develops more it will spread out. This has been the case with every urban area worldwide ever. The world's poorest urban areas are also it's most dense. Dhaka, Bangladesh, has 16,235,000 in just 142 square miles. Factories, office buildings, stores, hospitals, power plants, etc, all take up space that could be used for residential living. As incomes grow, the amount of all of the above that is needed per person, also grows, as does wanting more living space, making it inevitable that density will decrease. It's human nature. While development paths, infrastructural inertia, geography, cultural and government policies can change this somewhat, it is an inevitability of socioeconomic development.
Here are the urban areas of North America:
20,685,000 / 4,495mi New York
15,135,000 / 2,432mi Los Angeles
9,185,000 / 2,647mi Chicago
6,550,000 / 883mi Toronto
6,280,000 / 1,998mi Dallas-Fort Worth
6,005,000 / 1,864mi Houston
5,955,000 / 1,080mi San Francisco Bay
5,820,000 / 1,239mi Miami
5,595,000 / 1,981mi Philadelphia
5,120,000 / 2,645mi Atlanta
4,950,000 / 1,322mi Washington DC
4,490,000 / 2,056mi Boston
4,295,000 / 1,245mi Phoenix
3,660,000 / 1,337mi Detroit
3,570,000 / 597mi Montreal
3,475,000 / 1,145mi Seattle
Here the world's largest urban areas ranked in terms of density:
People per square mile:
114,300 Dhaka
67,300 Mumbai
62,500 Karachi
50,600 Kinshasa
36,400 Manila
34,000 Lahore
31,800 Kolkata
30,800 Delhi
30,800 Lima
26,600 Chennai
25,800 Istanbul
25,300 Mexico City
25,200 Indonesia
23,600 Seoul
23,400 Cairo
23,300 Lagos
22,600 Bangalore
21,700 Tehran
19,700 Sao Paulo
18,100 Shenzhen
16,800 Ho Chi Minh City
16,400 Chengdu
15,300 Bangkok
15,100 Rio de Janeiro
15,100 Shanghai
14,600 London
14,500 Tianjin
13,800 Buenos Aires
13,700 Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto
13,400 Beijing
12,700 Guangzhou-Foshan
11,400 Tokyo
9,600 Paris
8,100 Moscow
7,400 Toronto
6,700 Nagoya
6,500 Essen-Dusseldorf
6,000 Los Angeles
4,500 New York
3,400 Chicago
...If you were to rank those same urban areas from poorest to richest the list would look very similar.
The world's poorest urban areas are also it's most dense. Dhaka, Bangladesh, has 16,235,000 in just 142 square miles. Factories, office buildings, stores, hospitals, power plants, etc, all take up space that could be used for residential living. As incomes grow, the amount of all of the above that is needed per person, also grows, as does wanting more living space, making it inevitable that density will decrease. It's human nature.
I don't agree with that. It makes no sense to compare Canada with Bangladesh, which is ultra-dense due to other reasons (transport bottleneck, lack of car ownership etc), not high urbanity. They are not comparable and you shouldn't come to conclusions based on that. I can also give you a dozen poor but sparsely population area. For example, in China, the richest area (Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang etc) are the densest, while the under developed northwest/southwest is least dense. Tokyo is densest and most wealthy in Japan. In the US, aren't NYC and San Francisco the densest cities?
In comparing with third world countries you missed the important factor that these countries tend to have very high birth rate, and people are unlikely to have cars, and even public transit tends to be bad, if available at all, which means they are dense because people have no options. In rich countries, however, cities are denser out of choice because people prefer to live an urban life.
For example, Paris has 2.3 million people, on 40 sq miles. Barcelona, Seville, Lyon etc. are all very dense cities. So you can't say "when people get richer, the city gets less dense" and "people will move to the suburbs". In those cities people live in the suburbs only because they can't afford the city centre. It is typical American way of thinking/lifestyle that the rich live in the suburbs among trees while downtown is full of poor population. Honestly, outside America, very few rich or even mid-income countries work like that. People still want to live inner London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo over the suburbs. Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto definitely fall into that category too. Even in NYC and San Francisco, the urban core is still the most desirable. I think only in largely failed cities where the middle class and the rich prefer to stay away from city centres because the city can't manage its social problems in the core (eg: Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles) and the suburbs are considered "safer". In that respect, the US is more of an anomaly than the general trend.
Americans, don't make the mistake of assuming the typical American way of lifestyle and urban fabric is universally accepted. It is far from that. Few countries value the boring suburbs more than city centres, and where it happens, these cities have already failed its citizens.
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