Canadian province/ U.S. state analogues

[someone123]

It's a pretty different setup from Halifax where there's a handful of universities in the urban core of a medium-sized city. People say the feel is Boston-like and by that they mean there are urban campuses embedded in areas with New England-y architecture (particularly around the South/West Ends which even have the odd three-decker). It's a bit of a tired comparison but as a qualitative observation probably captures the on-the-ground feel no less than a lot of high-level statistics.

ME and NS are different in some pretty basic ways despite being close to each other and similar in scale. They're sort of alike "on average" but with less real overlap than it seems as Maine is almost like 2 different states while the southern part is part of the US Northeast corridor.

In a similar vein there isn't all that much overlap in urbanism as New England has a heavy ~1900s industrial development component nearly absent in the Maritimes while Halifax has a lot of random high density infill that New England cities mostly won't allow.

[Docere]

Right, the land grant university is a distinctly American thing. Every province's leading (or in some cases only) university is in the largest city and/or provincial capital. There's no Canadian equivalent of State College PA or Urbana IL.

[Docere]

If there's "two Maines", is there also two Nova Scotias? Cape Breton is pretty distinct.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Docere

Not quite at that scale though.

GTHA is about 80% the size of Chicago, and both are considered the same more or less the same stature in terms of being global cities.

Winnipeg is about 20% the size of Minneapolis, closer to the Buffalo-Toronto difference. It's basically Omaha-sized.

It wasn't all that long ago that the metro area of Detroit had more people than Toronto's metro. And it won't really be long until Toronto's surpasses Chicago's which is currently shrinking.

[Docere]

FWIW here's how Canadian cities are classified according to the Globalization and World Cities Network:


Alpha: Toronto (Chicago, Los Angeles)
Alpha-: Montreal (Boston, San Francisco)
Beta+: Vancouver (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Washington)
Beta: No Canadian cities (Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle)
Beta-: Calgary (Austin, Detroit, Minneapolis, Tampa)
Gamma+: No Canadian cities (Baltimore, Charlotte, Orlando, Phoenix, San Jose, St. Louis)
Gamma: Ottawa (Nashville)
Gamma-: Edmonton (Cleveland, Columbus, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Sacramento, Salt Lake City)

There's also a longer list of high sufficiency and sufficiency cities below the Gammas. Halifax, Quebec City and Winnipeg are on the list of sufficiency cities and Saskatoon was just added.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global...earch_Network#

[Architype]

Originally Posted by Docere

Right, the land grant university is a distinctly American thing. Every province's leading (or in some cases only) university is in the largest city and/or provincial capital. There's no Canadian equivalent of State College PA or Urbana IL.

Wolfville, Antigonish, Sackville, and maybe Kingston, most resemble that, there aren't any better examples in Canada, are there?

[harls]

Originally Posted by Architype

Wolfville, Antigonish, Sackville, and maybe Kingston, most resemble that, there aren't any better examples in Canada, are there?

Lennoxville?

[Docere]

Except for Queen's/Kingston, these are small primarily undergraduate institutions.

[Docere]

FWIW Portland, Maine has 15,000 students and the following institutions:


Maine College of Art
Northeastern University Roux Institute
University of Maine School of Law
University of New England
University of Southern Maine
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Docere

Right, the land grant university is a distinctly American thing. Every province's leading (or in some cases only) university is in the largest city and/or provincial capital. There's no Canadian equivalent of State College PA or Urbana IL.

The University of British Columbia's main Point Grey is adjacent to Vancouver, but it's not part of the city. Neither are the University Endowment Lands next to it, that are administered directly by the province. UBC has its own administration, controlling planning, development and services. It has an RCMP policing arrangement, rather than using the Vancouver Police Department, but it pays for fire coverage from the Vancouver Fire Department.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Docere

FWIW Portland, Maine has 15,000 students and the following institutions:

A few of these I'd never heard of and they turn out to be mostly online institutions established in the past few years. Portland's not that huge and there isn't really a place for a major university campus to hide. As you say Orono has the main University of Maine campus which I think is #1 in Maine.

In Halifax there are around 32,500 post-secondary students. In theory if the setup were the same, Portland should have more, not a little under 1/2. It's similar if you look at other areas like transportation. I'm not sure about healthcare as the US spends a lot more on that but Halifax is getting a new 2 million square foot complex which Portland doesn't seem to have an analog to. Some of the hospitals in Halifax have a regional role which I'd guess Boston serves for New England.

Portland does heritage preservation much better than Halifax (not just number of buildings but state of the buildings too) and if you listened to a lot of people in Halifax you'd think Portland wouldn't even be economically possible as so many Halifax developers argue every old building is too expensive to keep around. On the flip side Halifax has far more construction and higher density stuff and in the long run it's likely to be much more vibrant and feel much larger. I'd guess transit is a no contest win for Halifax and the gap is likely to grow. These are areas where Canadian cities in general tend to have an advantage over comparable US cities.

[Docere]

There's a thread on flagship universities in the US. I think about 13 are in the largest city and/or state capital.

[someone123]

It's a minor example but Halifax used to have brick sidewalks and a number of cobblestone streets (there are still vestigial portions of the old Buckingham and Granville cobblestones). People argued they shouldn't be kept because they're not accessible and are dangerous due to the icy climate. They're still quite common in Portland where the setting is basically identical.

On the other hand there are new public areas in Halifax like Argyle, the SGR redo, or the Nova Centre that look more modern and don't really have equivalents in Portland. The pitchforks would be out if they proposed building a copy of the 10th tallest building under construction in Halifax over in Portland. For the most part they build medium-sized historically inspired boxes there. There are some good ones but that kind of infill won't radically change a city.

[Docere]

Halifax is a regional hub, albeit for a less populated, largely rural region, in a way that Portland is not.

In terms of population the Portland MSA (556,000) is bigger than Halifax. But MSAs can get ridiculously big and the urbanized area is a much smaller 205,000.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Docere

Halifax is a regional hub, albeit for a less populated, largely rural region, in a way that Portland is not.

In terms of population the Portland MSA (556,000) is bigger than Halifax. But MSAs can get ridiculously big and the urbanized area is a much smaller 205,000.

Portland also has the proximity of Boston, which is equivalent to Halifax having Montreal just on the other side of Truro, as opposed to a 12-hour drive away.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Docere

In terms of population the Portland MSA (556,000) is bigger than Halifax. But MSAs can get ridiculously big and the urbanized area is a much smaller 205,000.

Portland reminds me more of a larger and more vibrant Saint John than a twin of Halifax. NB also has a separate capital and didn't put the university in Saint John; it was basically set up as an American state for Loyalists. One other little thing is they both have freeways running through inner city areas.

The Halifax CMA is likely to pass the Portland MSA in the next couple of years.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Portland also has the proximity of Boston, which is equivalent to Halifax having Montreal just on the other side of Truro, as opposed to a 12-hour drive away.

Maine seems to have more tourism and is more of a draw for the larger number of wealthier Americans wanting to get away from the big cities. The Maritimes play this up a bit as they want this business but I don't think it's on anywhere near the same scale as in the USA. You have to have a really nice and relatively small town in the Maritimes to run it primarily off of tourism.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by someone123

The Halifax CMA is likely to pass the Portland MSA in the next couple of years.

Which means very little tbh as MSAs often give an inflated perspective.

On paper, Grand Rapids for example is Ottawa-sized. But in reality it's probably more of a London (ON).

[Docere]

Originally Posted by someone123

NB also has a separate capital and didn't put the university in Saint John; it was basically set up as an American state for Loyalists.

That's a good point. It's the Maritime province that borders the US and has a rather similar demographic and feel to Maine-2* or northern Maine. NB is also more politically conservative than the other Maritime provinces.

* US Congressional districts are about 700,000 each, so Maine-2 and NB incidentally also have similar populations.

[Docere]

If you matched neighboring provinces/regions with US divisions you'd get something like this:

New England : Atlantic
Mid-Atlantic : Quebec
East North Central : Ontario
West North Central: Manitoba/Saskatchewan
Mountain : Alberta
Pacific : British Columbia

The lineup seems reasonable (or at least somewhat reasonable) in Western Canada, but not so much in Eastern Canada. The Northeast - an old, high-wealth region lines up with old, low-wealth regions (not to mention Quebec is a nation within a nation). Ontario meanwhile is the closest analogue to Great Lakes region, yet plays an outsized role in Canada and makes up 40% of the population.

[Docere]

A cross-border comparison of agriculture ca. 1980. It compares BC and Washington, the Prairie Provinces and North Dakota/Montana, Ontario and Michigan, Quebec and New York, and the Maritime Provinces and Maine.

http://tinyurl.com/y6uyuu3k

It notes that agriculture is of far more significance in Washington than BC (where there's little agricultural land). That the farms on the US side of the border are larger than in the Prairies, in part because it was settled earlier, in part because the Prairies are more urbanized. Ontario/Michigan and Quebec/New York had rather similar profiles.