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Statscan numbers

I wonder how much it would change by adding neighboring areas like Sunalta, Lower Mount Royal mission., etc.. ? Mission has a fair amount of older residents, but also has tons of millennials. Overall I think Calgary's core no matter how the lines are drawn is going to be heavy with millennials.
 
Especially given that we have the youngest by a relatively enormous margin. Redrawing the lines wouldn't make much of a difference. The other top 10 seem to be within less than 10% of each other, while we're 7% ahead of Halifax.
 
I worked out the average age of adults from the 2016 census a little while ago; I'm guessing the broad trends will remain:
1651124952697.png


I used the average age of adults because kids skew age distributions: consider two adults in their late 30s, average age is 37. If they have one kid, average age is 27; with two kids, the average age is 22, with three kids the average age is 19.

Sunalta, Lower Mt Royal and Sunnyside are in the same age range as the downtown roughly as are the north parts of Cliff Bungalow/Mission.
 
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Great work, although now a big growth area, I'm curious about downtown and its increase or lack thereof.
Calgary has one of the fastest growing downtowns in Canada, albeit from a small base population. Here's the statcan release on downtowns, really neat work:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220209/dq220209b-eng.htm

Note: how Statscan defines "downtown" is a bit different than how the city does so they can apply a consistent methodology across all cities in Canada. So it's more than just the neighbourhood we call "downtown" it includes much of how Calgary defines the Centre City, including Downtown, Beltline, Chinatown, Eau Claire, East Village and bits of other neighbourhoods.

Calgary's downtown is growing at over 3x faster than the region, growing by 21% in the past 5 years.

Population 2016: 38,663
Population 2021: 46,763
 
I feel like almost everyone these days refers to those neighbourhoods (CBD, Chinatown, Eau Claire, West End, EV, and Beltline) as downtown. Most people in my generation would also include Mission in that. Nobody says “I’m going out in Mission”, it’s just “I’m going downtown” and then go to College Bar or wherever else on Fourth 🤷🏻‍♂️ but most definitely, the previously mentioned 6 neighbourhoods are “downtown”.

A little surprised it’s only 47,000, I figured downtown would be 50+ by now. But either way, it’ll get there this year or next.
 
I feel like almost everyone these days refers to those neighbourhoods (CBD, Chinatown, Eau Claire, West End, EV, and Beltline) as downtown. Most people in my generation would also include Mission in that. Nobody says “I’m going out in Mission”, it’s just “I’m going downtown” and then go to College Bar or wherever else on Fourth 🤷🏻‍♂️ but most definitely, the previously mentioned 6 neighbourhoods are “downtown”.

A little surprised it’s only 47,000, I figured downtown would be 50+ by now. But either way, it’ll get there this year or next.
It's just about how they define the boundaries. We discussed this pages ago when this data first came out and the pros/cons of different approaches on setting those boundaries. Statscan has a big article on how they calculate the boundaries in detail here

This is Statscan's definition in which the numbers correspond and I think is generally pretty correct:
1653154411062.png


Notable misses are Lower Mount Royal/Cliff Bungalow which is definitely more of a Beltline extension supporting 17th Ave and the "downtown" than it is a Upper Mount Royal extension. Mission is partially included but not the far southern parts. So if you included that bit "downtown" would be above 50,000.

But the city of Calgary also misses LMR so 🤷‍♂️

1653154583514.png


Defining geographies and getting everyone to agree on the methodology and/or the actually map boundary outcomes is a sisyphean task in which it can't ever be completed. Plus things change and grow over time so hard to lock in a definition that everyone agrees forever.

Whatever the boundary, it's good they keep it consistently so we can all celebrate 21% growth in 5 years.
 
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Agreed. I expect we’ll see 21% growth again over the next five years. As the downtown population increases it’ll be harder to increase by 21% every five years but I think in this next stretch of five years 21% is doable given the amount of residential units that have just completed construction since the census or are still under construction, not to mention a few office conversion projects coming down the pipe. Who knows we might even top 60,000 by 2026.

I was too lazy to read the statscan article on how the calculate the boundaries, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Mission and LMR are eventually added into the boundaries.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised to see even higher than 21% growth over these next 5. Downtown residential construction is hotter now than it was in 2016, 2017, and 2018 I’m pretty sure. And there are no signs of it abating. 60,000 is a pretty sure thing by 2026.
 
Interesting numbers on the next highest mother tongue after English.


s6mo54j7jgn91.jpg



Here are the numbers by % of people (next most in brackets)

Calgary Skyview- Punjabi 26.1 (11.7 Hindi)
Calgary Nose Hill- Cantonese 6.7 (4.8 (Mandarin)
Calgary Rocky Ridge- Mandarin 5.6 (4.8 Cantonese)
Calgary Forest Lawn- Tagalog 6.0 (4.8 Vietnamese)
Calgary Centre- Spanish 5.4 (2.8 Mandarin)
Calgary Signal Hill- Spanish 4.5 (4.2 Mandarin)
Calgary Confederation- Cantonese 2.9 (2.8 Mandarin)
Calgary Midnapore- Tagalog 3.9 (2.6 Spanish)
Calgary Sheperd- Tagalog 3.7 (2.4 Spanish)
Calgary Heritage- Tagalog 4.3 (2.6 Mandarin)
 
Very cool. Honestly surprised to see two Spanish districts.

On another note, Alberta grew by just over 20,000 in the last quarter, and over 62,000 in the past year. Officially past 4.5 million people.

The federation has grown by just over 500,000 people in the last year, which would put us by Q4 2023 at 40 million people.

 
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