Greater Toronto's Sprawl

[doady]

Yes, but Mississauga is bigger and started intensifying later. In 20-30 years, I would bet that Markham will be far more dense within its developed area than Mississauga or anywhere else outside the 416 in the GTA.

Markham's developed area is already roughly half the size of Mississauga's, so it would need to add at least 50,000 people within the next the 20-30 years without developing a single parcel of farmland just to match Mississauga's current (population) density, let alone Mississauga's density in 20-30 years; Mississauga itself is projected to another 100,000 people. So Markham would need to add over 100,000 people within the next 20-30 years without destroying any farmland just to catch up to Mississauga density-wise. And I would say it would need to add at least another 100,000 people on top of that before I would consider it "much denser" than Mississsauga.

So the question is: can Markham add 200,000 people in the next 20-30 years exclusively through the redevelopment of existing developed lands? I seriously doubt it.

 

[TrickyRicky]

Glen,

I don't know. We will see. Most of the info kicking around that forms opinions of what is happening is at least 5 years old. I suspect that the conditions on the ground now won't be analyzed and interpreted correctly for another 5 years. I suspect the history of now will reveal that the story of the previous recession was a tipping point that saw strong absolute growth in many 905 areas accompanied by worsening or stagnant per capita economic conditions. I grew up in Caledon and what I see now is more of less. That is more people and businesses but less wealth and loss of primary industries relative to the population base it needs to sustain.

 

[canarob]

Markham's developed area is already roughly half the size of Mississauga's, so it would need to add at least 50,000 people within the next the 20-30 years without developing a single parcel of farmland just to match Mississauga's current (population) density, let alone Mississauga's density in 20-30 years; Mississauga itself is projected to another 100,000 people. So Markham would need to add over 100,000 people within the next 20-30 years without destroying any farmland just to catch up to Mississauga density-wise. And I would say it would need to add at least another 100,000 people on top of that before I would consider it "much denser" than Mississsauga.

Even after increases made last year, Markham's settlement area is only about 12,348 ha, which is about 43% of Mississauga's settlement area, considered to be the entire city, of 28,842 ha. I don't mean to split hairs, but it's not quite half the size. Markham is expected to grow by 121,500 by 2031 (2009: 302,000; 2031: 423,500). Over that same period, Mississauga is expected to grow by 83,000 to 812,000. Using some rough math, Mississauga would have 28.15 people/ha and Markham would have 34.30 people/ha in 2031. These are of course still just projections. I used data from the websites of the town and city, but if anything is out of date, please let me know.

 

[Dan416]

Maybe doady is excluding the Airport lands from his calculations.

 

[doady]

Mississauga's urban area excluding the airport is around 27,050k hectares. Markham's plan is for 12,500 urban hectares, so it would need a population of 375,000 in 2031 just to match Mississauga's 2031 population density. Even without taking the employment density into account (also very important), it seems highly unlikely that Markham will be "much denser" than Mississauga in the next 20-30 years, and even being as dense seems unlikely if you take employment into account.

 

[canarob]

Markham just added 1,000 hectares to its settlement area in 2010. If you don't include that in the 2009 population numbers (Ma:302,000; Mi:729,000), Markham had a density of 26.26/ha and Mississauga (excluding the airport lands) had a density of 26.95, only marginally denser. If the population projections are accurate (Ma:423,500; Mi:812,000), using your land figures, Markham would be 33.88/ha and Mississauga would be 30.02/ha in 2031.

I do agree about employment density though since Mississauga has the airport. Although in the longer term when Pickering Airport is built, east Markham would benefit from that. Otherwise, I would imagine that they will both attract a number of office parks, etc.

 

[Glen]

Glen,

I don't know. We will see. Most of the info kicking around that forms opinions of what is happening is at least 5 years old. I suspect that the conditions on the ground now won't be analyzed and interpreted correctly for another 5 years. I suspect the history of now will reveal that the story of the previous recession was a tipping point that saw strong absolute growth in many 905 areas accompanied by worsening or stagnant per capita economic conditions. I grew up in Caledon and what I see now is more of less. That is more people and businesses but less wealth and loss of primary industries relative to the population base it needs to sustain.

I appreciate what you are saying. Yes data can be a bit stagnant. There are still sources though, that show that things have not changed to much. I follow Toronto economic indicators reports every month, along with the yearly T.E.S. The same thing you witnessed in Caledon has been happening for a generation in Toronto, except for the 'more businesses' part. I also don't subscribe to the notion that the most recent recession proves that Toronto has reached some point whereby it is now better situated than other municipalities to grow. Part of the problem is that so much of the non office employment has already been decimated in the city that there was not much left to lose. Additionally Toronto benefited form a large increase in public service employment (health and education escpecially). This is worrisome. If there is a large cutback in the public service, or a Financial Services crisis hits home, Toronto may be extremely vulnerable.

I really think all the condo development has clouded the picture of what is really happening in Toronto proper. There is a superficial appearance that Toronto is booming. For condo developers and a wealthy minority, that is true. Unfortunately, for the majority of citizens, real wage growth and incomes have been falling behind the region, province and country. Things are not all rosy in the 905 region, that is for sure. But that is more a reflection of global issues than regional ones.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=3111

http://www.td.com/economics/special/sg1010_toronto.pdf

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

http://www.planetizen.com/node/36327

Why did nobody notice it? If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?" - Queen Elizabeth, on the global credit crunch.

Things are so large in the Vaughan Corporate Centre, an edge city about 20 kilometres northwest of downtown Toronto, that a cross-section of Vancouver's downtown peninsula, from False Creek to Lost Lagoon, could fit within five of its blocks.

There's a street named Colossus, leading to a cineplex of the same name. The overpass and ramps of the adjacent freeways take up an area the size of the West End. They in turn are surrounded by acres of emptiness, just grass and dirt, awaiting more big boxes, more asphalt.

This is a landscape built by and for civil engineers. It looks primarily designed to handle snow: wide roads, wider shoulders, lots of space to pile the stuff. It's car-dependent, of course, and high carbon. Wasteful. Hostile. And very vulnerable.

 

[Cooool]

Is sprawl in Toronto comparable to American cities? It seems Mississauga is compact sprawl, whereas Northeastern cities like Boston and New York have sprawling estates on the edges of the periphery.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Probably Chicago and Detroit Coooool. Phoenix actually. Mesa=Mississauga(?)

 

[doady]

http://www.planetizen.com/node/36327

Why did nobody notice it? If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?" - Queen Elizabeth, on the global credit crunch.

Things are so large in the Vaughan Corporate Centre, an edge city about 20 kilometres northwest of downtown Toronto, that a cross-section of Vancouver's downtown peninsula, from False Creek to Lost Lagoon, could fit within five of its blocks.

There's a street named Colossus, leading to a cineplex of the same name. The overpass and ramps of the adjacent freeways take up an area the size of the West End. They in turn are surrounded by acres of emptiness, just grass and dirt, awaiting more big boxes, more asphalt.

This is a landscape built by and for civil engineers. It looks primarily designed to handle snow: wide roads, wider shoulders, lots of space to pile the stuff. It's car-dependent, of course, and high carbon. Wasteful. Hostile. And very vulnerable.

My response to Mr. Price:

In other words, Toronto's urban area is the densest urban area in Canada by far.

What more needs to be said?

 

[jje1000]

I'm pretty sure Vaughan usually isn't considered part of Toronto. As is Newmarket, Brampton, etc.

If they were refering to the GTA, they'd say so.

I'm still waiting for Glen's report back from Mayor Ford. I actually doubt Ford will do anything, though.

 

[lafard]

Those numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt though, where you draw the boundaries matters a great deal. The urban areas of suburban Vancouver easily approach the overall density for Toronto (Richmond is 180,000 on 130km^2, or 1700/km^2. Yet 40% of that land is off limits for development and the real density is 2700, on par with the GTA)

If you want to look at it another way, Vancouver's developed 6500 hectares of farmland since implementing the ALR (their equivalent of the greenbelt) in 1974. That's about 1/4 of Mississauga. They've fit a million more people by urbanizing a piece of land that holds maybe 150,000 in the GTA. Yet, if you've been there you realize that even that is a terribly flawed metric.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I must be missing Mr. Price's point...

A number of interchanges along the TransCanada Highway through Vancouver (Which I assume is his home city) look equally large and wasteful so why the snide criticism. At least there are plans in place to improve the "urbancy" of the area, even though I have my own doubts on whether it will be successful or not.

 

[nfitz]

A number of interchanges along the TransCanada Highway through Vancouver ...

My recollection is that the TransCanada Highway only has 2 interchanges in Vancouver. 1st Avenue and McGill Street. I'd hardly call 1st Avenue wasteful ... so an number of interchanges in Vancouver is ... one.