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I can't see Montreal passing up Toronto, even if it was formerly Canada's premier city. The only city that could possibly surpass Toronto would be Vancouver, and that's solely on the basis of its location on the Pacific Rim. With Canada increasing its trade ties to Asia (via the new TPP), it's pretty easy to envision Vancouver growing in influence. And unlike the US, Canada only has one major Pacific city.
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Ummm. Vancouver has under three million people in its metro and Toronto has well over six million. I'd say that Vancouver has almost no chance of catching Toronto given that cities in the developed world don't really grow anymore at the type of pace that would be needed for that to happen.
I would definitely go with Toronto in this poll. To me both Toronto and Montreal still seem fairly comparable. I think it would be hard to say that about NYC and any other American city, or Mexico city and others in Mexico.
Even if Montreal isn't considered the premier city in Canada anymore, it was in the not too distant past, and some might argue that it is still just as much if not more of an historic and cultural hub in Canada, pretty much standing on its own as a fairly unique world class city.
It's true that Montreal as "second city" nonetheless feels like "somewhere's" uncontested big city when you're there.
If you're sitting in a sports bar the "national" sportscast that's on the screens is from Montreal, the magazines at the supermarket checkout are from Montreal, the most popular talk shows are produced in Montreal, your kids' school books are published in Montreal, etc.
You don't really get the impression there is another metropolis (within the same "nation" anyway) that's looming over you in Montreal, like you have in most countries when you're in the "second city".
I think the same can be said for all of these cities. And out of all these cities, I think that New York is most likely to see something like this happen. We’re also probably the largest targets for terrorist attacks too. NYC is no stranger to catastrophic events. With Toronto it seems to be a matter of “what if” something crazy happens where in NYC it’s more of when is the next thing going to happen, and how bad is it going to be this time? I think the most obvious long term disaster for us would be rising sea levels.
I think the sea-level rise threat is overstated. NYC real estate is just too valuable to just let the ocean reclaim it, it is orders of magnitude cheaper to just build a dam.
I also agree that over the long run (hundred+ years), the real "threat" to NYC dominance will come from DC and not LA. I think LA will continue to slow down in growth (birth rates of Hispanics falling + net domestic outflow of people due to COL not keeping up with salaries... those new infrastructure taxes are there for the long run).
I get why Toronto is leading this poll (by a wide margin too)....
I don’t think Toronto is being that closely followed by Montreal,
either won’t be over taking anytime soon.
Toronto is about 6.4 million metro
Montreal is about 4.2 million metro
Vancouver only about 2.4 million metro
The question is this century, not "anytime soon."
A lot of things are happening in both Toronto and MTL at the moment, and a lot of things could change in the next 82 years... That's a long time.
I don't see Toronto ever going into decline in absolute terms, but instead slow down in terms of population growth, which is normal for a city when it reaches critical mass. You can't keep adding 100,000 people / yr forever and you can't keep building hundreds of new condos forever.
MTL has the best prospect of surpassing Toronto in the next 80 years in SOME areas - Montreal already leads in terms of tourism, history, culture. The only thing it falls behind is economic mass - though that is also changing very rapidly as Montreal's economy - especially in tech, education, and professional services - is booming at the moment. The city also boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada - at 6.1% or near full employment.
Even population is not a done deal - Montreal is the 2nd largest francophone city in the world after Paris. It operates its own immigration system and takes in tens of thousands of francophone immigrants every year (over 55,000 / yr to Quebec, and over 80% of them to MTL).
Even population is not a done deal - Montreal is the 2nd largest francophone city in the world after Paris. It operates its own immigration system and takes in tens of thousands of francophone immigrants every year (over 55,000 / yr to Quebec, and over 80% of them to MTL).
I don't really see Montreal coming close to Toronto again, but that's still an interesting hypothesis.
Historically, without truly being conscious of it, Montreal and Toronto were basically "competing" for the same immigrants: your classic North American "Ellis Island" immigrants.
But in recent years and increasingly so, the two cities are operating in very different spheres in terms of where they draw their new immigrants from.
As such, Montreal could ramp up its immigration significantly and Toronto could do the same but they wouldn't really be dipping into the same demographic pools.
Quebec does run its own Montreal-focused immigration program but the quotas are negotiated with Ottawa. In theory at least, if it wanted to it could negotiate an increase with Ottawa and bring immigration to Montreal to Toronto-like levels.
A lot of things are happening in both Toronto and MTL at the moment, and a lot of things could change in the next 82 years... That's a long time.
I don't see Toronto ever going into decline in absolute terms, but instead slow down in terms of population growth, which is normal for a city when it reaches critical mass. You can't keep adding 100,000 people / yr forever and you can't keep building hundreds of new condos forever.
MTL has the best prospect of surpassing Toronto in the next 80 years in SOME areas - Montreal already leads in terms of tourism, history, culture. The only thing it falls behind is economic mass - though that is also changing very rapidly as Montreal's economy - especially in tech, education, and professional services - is booming at the moment. The city also boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada - at 6.1% or near full employment.
Even population is not a done deal - Montreal is the 2nd largest francophone city in the world after Paris. It operates its own immigration system and takes in tens of thousands of francophone immigrants every year (over 55,000 / yr to Quebec, and over 80% of them to MTL).
Not to rain on your parade but Montreal is actually the 4th largest Francophone city in the world.
Where do you get this from? I can buy the whole history and culture thing because those are subjective. I can even buy history for Montreal over Toronto but culture i'm on the fence given all the cultural amenities T.O has. This isn't cultural preference either - it is cultural amenities including theatre, ballet, symphony, museums, art galleries, festivals etc so yes, Toronto could make equally strong cultural claims. Particularly if you are speaking of creative arts industry and employment within the creative arts, Toronto has way more artists employed than Montreal. That said, tourism is really about hard numbers and I have never seen anything than shows Montreal garnering more visitation than Toronto. If you have those numbers however, I'd love to see them but I think you are speculating here. Don't just speculate about business visitation either. Montreal is not a business basket case and actually benefits from more convention visitation than Toronto so don't just assume Montreal's visitation numbers are all about leisure either.
I'll help you out a bit with this however:
In 2017 Toronto had 43.7 million visitors
visitors spent 8.8 Billion dollars
International visitors topped 5 million for the first time
Overnight visitors topped 15 million for the first time https://www.newswire.ca/news-release...670864213.html
The rest were day visitors so there you have it - 15 million overnight visitors and 28 million day visitors. Your turn for Montreal..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Quebec does run its own Montreal-focused immigration program but the quotas are negotiated with Ottawa. In theory at least, if it wanted to it could negotiate an increase with Ottawa and bring immigration to Montreal to Toronto-like levels.
It could but it still has quite the deficit to catch up to T.O. As I mentioned before as well, Toronto has a lot more satellite cities in the horseshoe that are also growing in population and will increasingly become economically linked to the core CMA so when you include all that it would take the Greater Montreal region at a very minimum of 2-3 decades simply to catch up to Toronto now let alone a Toronto that is a moving target towards growth and one that is a target growing 2X as fast as you. I suspect as a region, Toronto is better equipped to handle 100K plus new resident than Montreal is. There would need to be a significant investment in infrastructure and development in order for Montreal to accommodate this.
I agree with you that really, these cities are not 'fighting' for the same immigrants. Why would an immigrant who wants to merge into an English language dominated city choose Montreal over Toronto and vice versa for Montreal re French immigrants. If I were Moroccan or Tunisian or Algerian etc i'd move to Montreal not Toronto if I had a choice as an example.
Where do you get this from? I can buy the whole history and culture thing because those are subjective. I can even buy history for Montreal over Toronto but culture i'm on the fence given all the cultural amenities T.O has. This isn't cultural preference either - it is cultural amenities including theatre, ballet, symphony, museums, art galleries, festivals etc so yes, Toronto could make equally strong cultural claims. Particularly if you are speaking of creative arts industry and employment within the creative arts, Toronto has way more artists employed than Montreal. That said, tourism is really about hard numbers and I have never seen anything than shows Montreal garnering more visitation than Toronto. If you have those numbers however, I'd love to see them but I think you are speculating here.
I'll help you out a bit with this however:
In 2017 Toronto had 43.7 million visitors
visitors spent 8.8 Billion dollars
International visitors topped 5 million for the first time
Overnight visitors topped 15 million for the first time https://www.newswire.ca/news-release...670864213.html
The rest were day visitors so there you have it - 15 million overnight visitors and 28 million day visitors. Your turn for Montreal..
Yeah in terms of tourism, we're not even close. 2017 we had 11.1 million tourists, $4B in revenue. As to total visitors, I have no idea, but a ballpark figure would be around 25-28 million.
Yeah in terms of tourism, we're not even close. 2017 we had 11.1 million tourists, $4B in revenue. As to total visitors, I have no idea, but a ballpark figure would be around 25-28 million.
I think your figure is correct. The last I saw for Montreal was a bit north of 26 million. I didn't want to share because I wanted Bostonkid to pony up with his source. Last I saw both cities were breaking their own visitation records so it is a success story one and all. Toronto's airport is 2.5 times busier than Montreal so i'm not surprised T.O is ahead in terms of visitation. People are entitled to their own opinion about which city they prefer but they are not entitled to their own facts!
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