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Statscan numbers

Calgary would have been very different if we had had the university. We would have likely ended up with a university on lower coach hill if the myths are to be believed, probably with a streetcar running to it (whether as an entension of the sunalta or 17th Ave streetcar we'lll never know!
 
I don't agree that Calgary doesn't have anything comparable to Whyte Ave. I have always maintained that, while Whyte Ave is arguably the best/most active street in the province, it is Edmonton's only good/active street, while Calgary has several with a couple others under intensive development. Kensington (Kensington Road and Tenth Street) is absolutely comparable to Whyte Ave, as are 17 Ave and Stephen Ave. I'd also say that Bridgeland and 9 Avenue in Inglewood are up-and-comers in that realm as well. With First Street, Fourth Street, and Marda Loop on their heels. The only other street with a decent level of pedestrian retail activity in Edmonton is Jasper, and half the street is strip malls through Oliver. Ice Plaza might be decent eventually.

Whyte is barely the most active street in Edmonton anymore. Jasper (BTW I think you are confusing 104 ave with Jasper... Jasper doesn't really have any strip malls that I can think of along it, whereas 104th ave is precisely as you describe), 104th street, 124th street have all largely surpassed it in recent years for activity. There are some fairly significant projects ongoing that will transform it a bit again.

I have spent a lot of time in Kensington (I grew up in the area and went to JR high at Branton and Highschool at Aberhart) and also spent a lot of time on Whyte during university. I can pretty fastidiously say they're not on the same level, unless kensington has changed.
 
Calgary lacks a comparable to Whyte ave.
I would say 17th ave with its recent changes around Mount Royal Village (Best Buy, Urban Fare, and Canadian Tire) is comparable to Whyte Ave these days, but it also depends on what people are looking for in 'vibrancy'. It's not a direct comparable in , as I would say Whyte Ave has a more lively bar scene than 17th ave. I find 17th ave with those big box retailers to be a better strip for general retail, and makes it better for residents who live within 2 or 3 km distance. I think 17th ave can be generally considered a comparable to Whyte Ave. It might be lesser or better depending on different aspects.

I think it's been mentioned already, but where I find the big difference between Calgary and Edmonton is Calgary's other inner city neighborhoods are better developed, and tie into the core better. Strathcona being across the valley feels like it might as well be in another city.

Back to your earlier point though. There are good things about Edmonton obviously. I lived there for a couple of years, and never had any problems with it.
 
I don't agree that Calgary doesn't have anything comparable to Whyte Ave. I have always maintained that, while Whyte Ave is arguably the best/most active street in the province, it is Edmonton's only good/active street, while Calgary has several with a couple others under intensive development. Kensington (Kensington Road and Tenth Street) is absolutely comparable to Whyte Ave, as are 17 Ave and Stephen Ave. I'd also say that Bridgeland and 9 Avenue in Inglewood are up-and-comers in that realm as well. With First Street, Fourth Street, and Marda Loop on their heels. The only other street with a decent level of pedestrian retail activity in Edmonton is Jasper, and half the street is strip malls through Oliver. Ice Plaza might be decent eventually.
Couldn't agree more, Whyte ave is nice and all, but in all hoensty I'd say Kensington has a far friendlier and more vibrant feel. Although where Whyte ave (and Edmonton in general) deserve credit is for their small businesses. I don't know what it is, but Edmonton does a far better job of creating eclectic, interesting and unique businesses which really add to the city.

However Calgary's 3 major highstreets (9th, 17th and Kensington) and the half a dozen up and comers definitely outperform Edmonton in quantity and arguably quality (at least in terms of public realm)

If Calgary could create and sustain the kinds of weird, unique and vibrant businesses as other cities then I think we'd be in great shape. Although I'm not really sure how that can be accomplished. From what I understand one of the possible reasons for that is simply that the rents on many of our highstreets are just too high to sustain the very types of business which make those high streets worth visiting.
 
If you want to do some reading that will help put you to sleep, Statscan has info explaining what makes a CMA, and explains forward and reverse commuting rules, etc.. Of course of you're a stats nerd, you might get hard on instead...either way it's worth a quick look.


What's interesting is that under StatsCan's rules, Foothills County should currently be part of the Calgary CMA -- except that it isn't already; that's literally the only reason.

Long story short, the starting point of a CMA is a "population centre", which is a reasonably continuous and dense-ish (allowing for parks, industrial areas and so on) settled area. Edmonton, St Albert and Sherwood Park are all in the same population centre (but not the acreage belt in Strathcona County around Sherwood Park, since it's not dense enough). The Calgary population centre should include Heritage Pointe, which has enough density and is close enough to Legacy and the rest of the city. If the population centre at the core of a CMA stretches into multiple geographic areas (municipalities), then they're all included, which would mean that Foothills would be included because of this.

But -- here's catch-22 -- population centres can't cross CMA boundaries. So Heritage Pointe is defined as a separate population centre, and the Calgary CMA stops at the city limts. If someone broke into StatsCan's offices and destroyed the records of what was a CMA so they had to draw them from scratch, the Calgary CMA would include Foothills.

-- start very nerdy rant --

I've worked with multiple census agency data, and there's always a tension in census data between historical continuity and current relevance. It's valuable to be able to track changes in populations, economic conditions, and so on. Are places growing, are people leaving poverty, that sort of thing. So you don't want to change all the boundaries all the time, because it makes those comparisons impossible. But the census boundaries should also represent reality on the ground; both historical comparisons and current information is not useful if it doesn't represent what's happening in the real world.

Other places redraw their boundaries on a semi-regular basis; Australia did this in 2011 changing from their 1984 system. (There are always updates; this is a wholesale revision). Statistics Canada doesn't. It's boundary definitions are sacrosanct to a preposterous degree.

Downtown Edmonton has a census tract boundary drawn based on railroad yards that were dismantled 30 years ago. There are apartment buildings there that cross census tracts; residents living in different census tracts sharing the same garbage chute. You can be in a class at MacEwan University, and have your professor writing on the whiteboard in a different census tract; when the Oilers are on the powerplay, Draisaitl lines up in one census tract if it's the first and third periods, and another census tract in the second. Similarly in Lethbridge, you cross a census tract inside Park Place Mall going between the Winners and the food court.

It's not as bad in Calgary, but there's still problems. Lower Mt Royal and Cliff Bungalow are high-density communities, mixed income with some low income (especially in the older walk-up rental stock) and some gentrification in newer multifamily. Upper Mount Royal is richie-rich low-density houses. They're very different, and should be split. Yet Lower Mt Royal and Cliff Bungalow are in the same census tract as the northern half of Upper Mount Royal (to Frontenac/Hillcrest Aves.). Why? Because that was one of Calgary's 11 census tract boundaries drawn in the 1951 Census, and someone might want to compare something about the current population there with the population that was there in the 1951 census, perhaps how many residents of the "Asiatic Other" ethnicity (actual category from 1951 census, and not the least offensive one) there were and are. Or chart the last 65 years of trends in the employment of occupations like newsboys, bootblacks and software engineers.

-- end rant --

Anyways, all the bull about census boundaries aside, because StatsCan isn't likely to change their ways anytime soon, the actual problem is that CMAs can't have any holes in them. So it's not just Foothills that has to come, it's Foothills, Okotoks, High River, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Longview and the Eden Valley reserve that as a group have to have 50% of their workers working in Calgary. Foothills is around 60-65% working in Calgary, Okotoks is around 50%, DiamondValley is around 40%, but High River is only 20% or so working in Calgary.

In 2011, the whole area was 49.3%, within 200 of the cutoff. In 2016, it was 45.7%, over a thousand short. The biggest reason for the difference (other than random sampling noise) is that more Okotoks residents work in Okotoks. I don't know what 2021 will bring; on one hand, employment in downtown Calgary has dropped so those long-commuters will be hurt. On the other, there might be more long-distance remote commuting. On the third, a fair amount of the local employment in places like Okotoks is retail/service, and the employment in those sectors has been decimated.
 
Man, what shocks me the most is that there was almost the same number of people gained in Edmonton in comparison to Calgary. No offense to any Edmontonians here, but why are people still choosing to live in Edmonton over Calgary????😕😆 I just wished all of Edmonton moved down to Calgary, we can relocate the capital and university as well and just become a megacity with a metro population of over 3 mil!
Edmonton's job market is more stable due to large provincial government and university presence. I'm actually surprised that Edmonton is growing much faster than Calgary.
 
Sorry to keep my theme of "anti Edmonton" shit going (I really am not against Edmonton, I wish them all the best and love that they're finally picking up their socks), but Edmonton isn't growing "much" faster than Calgary. They are growing at a slightly faster rate, but we are still growing by an extra 7 to 10,000 per year. This discrepancy is due to our larger population.


Also, just for reference, the Calgary CMA grew at a faster rate from 2019 to 2020.

Calgary - 1.90%
Edmonton - 1.78%

Not a big difference, but still.
 
Edmonton's job market is more stable due to large provincial government and university presence. I'm actually surprised that Edmonton is growing much faster than Calgary.
The difference in jobs from the UofA to the Uof C is really quite negligible in the grand scheme of things, when you're talking workforce pools nearing a million people. There's actually a much greater difference in job numbers between the two airports. The public sector in Edmonton is a different story, as it's a large stable pool as you mentioned, but hasn't been growing lately.

As for population, Edmonton generally isn't growing faster. Even since 2014 when the downturn hit (including 2014) Calgary has had higher population growth 4 of the 6 years. A lot of it has had to do with international; migration and a slightly higher natural increase.
 
Did the numbers for Stascan census ever come out? I thought they came out in the summer of the census year, which if I'm not mistaken was this year (2021)
 
Did the numbers for Stascan census ever come out? I thought they came out in the summer of the census year, which if I'm not mistaken was this year (2021)
This is from wikipedia. Should be February 2022 for the first release:
  • February 9, 2022, for population and dwelling counts;
  • April 27, 2022, for age, sex at birth, and gender, type of dwelling;
  • July 13, 2022, for families, households, and marital status, Canadian military experience, and income;
  • August 17, 2022, for language;
  • September 21, 2022, for indigenous peoples, and housing;
  • October 26, 2022, for immigration, place of birth, and citizenship, ethnocultural and religious diversity, and mobility and migration; and
  • November 30, 2022, for education, labour, language of work, commuting and instruction in the official minority language.
 
Did the numbers for Stascan census ever come out? I thought they came out in the summer of the census year, which if I'm not mistaken was this year (2021)
The city census numbers come out in the summer months following the census, but the federal census is usually the year after.

This is from wikipedia. Should be February 2022 for the first release:
  • February 9, 2022, for population and dwelling counts;
I think that's what the timeline has usually looked like been in the past. IIRC, the statscan estimates are actually more accurate than the census numbers, but it'll be interesting to see where Calgary shakes out when the new numbers are released. We won't break 1.6 unless Foothills is added, but 1.6M isn't far off. As crazy as it seems, 2M isn't that far off.
 
Foothills won’t be added this census, or next. We’ll still be well over 1.5 million though, and firmly ahead of Ottawa and Edmonton. Though Ottawa may have gained some ground and retaken the lead over Edmonton. Will be interesting to see.
 
Foothills won’t be added this census, or next. We’ll still be well over 1.5 million though, and firmly ahead of Ottawa and Edmonton. Though Ottawa may have gained some ground and retaken the lead over Edmonton. Will be interesting to see.
We're already at 1.43M last census, so next census numbers will probably come in around 1.47M. The year after that should be interesting - will it be over 1.6M? It's gonna be close.

I agree Foothills won't be added this census, but next census? I thought the commute numbers were getting close to a point where they could possibly be joined next census.
 

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