Who will be Alberta's largest metro in a decade?

[ByeByeBaby]

Here's the Calgary-Edmonton-Ottawa trio of populations (annual estimates, which are not consistent with Census counts):

Calgary's been moving away from Edmonton pretty consistently. The other wild card is that the CMA definition could in theory be changed at some point in the future. StatsCan is very conservative on changing geographies, but it's possible that the Calgary CMA could by 2031 include the Foothills/Okotoks/High River area (~75K people), which would make the gap permanent. The Edmonton CMA already includes all of the plausible area for the forseeable future.

Here's the same figure for the smaller areas in Alberta:

Lethbridge has a pretty clear lead and gap on Red Deer. The one difference is that the Lethbridge CMA includes the surrounding areas, where Red Deer is just the city; in the same way that the Calgary CMA could be expanded in theory, at some point an expanded Red Deer CMA could include the surrounding areas - Red Deer Co / Innisfail / Sylvan Lake / Penhold etc. which would add 50K and boost Red Deer well past Lethbridge. As a practical matter, the Red Deer commuting belt is already larger than Lethbridge; the boundaries just make it smaller in the official statistics. And the Fort Mac people would point out the existence of the shadow population in the Wood Buffalo area which add a substantial population there.

 

[Surrealplaces]

The Alberta government employs fewer people in central admin than it did in the 80s, by a lot.

Health and education by its nature are far more spread out between the cities as growth pressures come from increased population.

Cities that rely on government admin jobs won't see the growth they used to see in past decades as work from home trends are having a big effect. Decentralizing of the admin jobs has been trending for a while, but work from home is amplifying the trend. I'm seeing it happen at both the provincial and federal levels.
Also to your point, Health and Education are the biggest provincial employers, and they are spread out to begin with.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Calgary's been moving away from Edmonton pretty consistently. The other wild card is that the CMA definition could in theory be changed at some point in the future. StatsCan is very conservative on changing geographies, but it's possible that the Calgary CMA could by 2031 include the Foothills/Okotoks/High River area (~75K people), which would make the gap permanent. The Edmonton CMA already includes all of the plausible area for the forseeable future.

Hard to say when Foothills will be incorporated into the CMA, but we can all agree it will happen sometime, just a matter of when, and agreed, once that happens the gap will be significant. I see Calgary growing faster over the next 10 years, they way it has over the past 20 years, by an average of about 4K extra per year. If the addition happens in 10 years, Foothills will be about 85K by then. It's the reason I don't foresee Calgary ever becoming number 2.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Yes we need to keep in mind that the Calgary CMA is only 54% as large as the Edmonton CMA in geographic size. We have a lot of significant towns that otherwise would be included if we were even 90% that size (which we will be when Foothills County is added).

 

[Chinook Arch]

I’m curious to why we’re even debating this? It’s obvious to anyone that Calgary will be the largest city in a decade, and probably will be forever.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

There really isn’t a debate. It was one Edmonton forumer making a baseless claim sourcing extremely limited data. There hasn’t been a “debate” since then, just sound reasoning as to why the OP is incorrect.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Yep, there was a claim made (see Post #2) that touched off a debate in the arena thread and so I moved the posts to a new thread and that was the thread name that seemed to fit. Like UW said, there isn't really a debate, I doubt anyone, even any of the other Edmonton forumers think Edmonton will be bigger in a decade.

 

[CBBarnett]

Yep, there was a claim made (see Post #2) that touched off a debate in the arena thread and so I moved the posts to a new thread and that was the thread name that seemed to fit. Like UW said, there isn't really a debate, I doubt anyone, even any of the other Edmonton forumers think Edmonton will be bigger in a decade.

It also doesn’t particularly matter who’s bigger here, the gap will remain a few percentage points for any of our lifetimes. Similarly, it’s unlikely we will ever close the gap to Vancouver either.

I’d rather see the proportion of true big city urban living grow rather than just the sheer size of the city. A 3 million person Vancouver is a better city than a 7 million person Houston, for example.

Distractions of sheer urban size is how we get tall building fetishes in unsustainable downtown economic monocultures and highways that just keep expanding to accommodate assumed growth.

Look past the numbers, it’s about urban quality - leveraging the growth that will happen to achieve better urban outcomes.

 

[Surrealplaces]

It also doesn’t particularly matter who’s bigger here, the gap will remain a few percentage points for any of our lifetimes. Similarly, it’s unlikely we will ever close the gap to Vancouver either.

I’d rather see the proportion of true big city urban living grow rather than just the sheer size of the city. A 3 million person Vancouver is a better city than a 7 million person Houston, for example.

Distractions of sheer urban size is how we get tall building fetishes in unsustainable downtown economic monocultures and highways that just keep expanding to accommodate assumed growth.

Look past the numbers, it’s about urban quality - leveraging the growth that will happen to achieve better urban outcomes.

Very true. Ultimately it's about good urban development, and both cities have made strides, and have also had their challenges. I would say both are in between the level you see in Houston and the level you see in Vancouver.

Aside from that some of us stats geeks (myself being one of them) get caught up in the excitement that goes with the numbers.

 

[darwink]

Houston proper is really cool. Renting a car and exploring really reminded me most of Japan. Much of the city is like urban fringe in Japan, a good portion like a mid sized city, and a good portion as full size city. The lack of zoning lets neighbourhoods evolve -- drove along a street that 50 years ago likely had a streetfront import mechanics shop. Now the street has evolved from mostly residential to that, a super specialized business/light industrial cluster.

There aren't many places in North America where something like that can happen. And it is really cool.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Houston proper is really cool. Renting a car and exploring really reminded me most of Japan. Much of the city is like urban fringe in Japan, a good portion like a mid sized city, and a good portion as full size city. The lack of zoning lets neighbourhoods evolve -- drove along a street that 50 years ago likely had a streetfront import mechanics shop. Now the street has evolved from mostly residential to that, a super specialized business/light industrial cluster.

There aren't many places in North America where something like that can happen. And it is really cool.

I find most city proper areas are usually pretty cool in US cities. One thing I didn't like with Houston city or some of the other US cities is how the downtowns are surrounded by a ring of freeways. There are some cool things about these cities and their neighborhoods, if only they were better integrated directly into the downtown core.

 

[DougB]

Houston proper is really cool. Renting a car and exploring really reminded me most of Japan. Much of the city is like urban fringe in Japan, a good portion like a mid sized city, and a good portion as full size city. The lack of zoning lets neighbourhoods evolve -- drove along a street that 50 years ago likely had a streetfront import mechanics shop. Now the street has evolved from mostly residential to that, a super specialized business/light industrial cluster.

There aren't many places in North America where something like that can happen. And it is really cool.

Houston seems to gradually transition for one land use to another and then back again. You are correct in that the lack of zoning seems to promote evolution.

 

[Cowtown]

Calgary being the largest metro in Alberta in a decade is all but guaranteed, and will likely be the largest forever going forward.

 

[Cowtown]

It also doesn’t particularly matter who’s bigger here, the gap will remain a few percentage points for any of our lifetimes. Similarly, it’s unlikely we will ever close the gap to Vancouver either.

I’d rather see the proportion of true big city urban living grow rather than just the sheer size of the city. A 3 million person Vancouver is a better city than a 7 million person Houston, for example.

Distractions of sheer urban size is how we get tall building fetishes in unsustainable downtown economic monocultures and highways that just keep expanding to accommodate assumed growth.

Look past the numbers, it’s about urban quality - leveraging the growth that will happen to achieve better urban outcomes.

That's true, but the debate on who has a better urban environment can never be decided, there are too many metrics, and too much of it comes down to personal opinion, but population numbers can't be debated

 

[AJX]

Interesting trend in relationship between YEG and YYC.
YEG for the first 6 months is 3.2 million. Down from being about half the traffic of yyc in 2019 to now closer to 1/3 the traffic!

Back in the 90s the mayor of Edmonton (can’t recall his name) was pushing for consolidation of the two Edmonton airports stating a strong airport was part of a strong economy. He was predicting that if YYC got to be too much bigger than YEG, Edmonton’s economy would start to become a spoke on the wheel of Calgary’s economy.