Melbourne surpasses Sydney in population

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Docere

What makes Melbourne the leading city for culture?

Perhaps over simplistic, but Melbourne boomed at the right time. The 1851 Gold Rush made Melbourne Australia's biggest city by 1865. This was a pivotal time when many of Australia's important institutions were developed: the Mint, the Stock Exchange, and the University of Melbourne. The abundance of wealth meant massive investment in museums, galleries, and sporting venues like MCG.

These cultural assets represented a giant lead the city never relinquished.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Hard to know how meaningful this is given that the ways of determining what the metro area is and what it includes can differ from country to country.

True although urban area tables can be helpful. I'll re-produce the one from Demographia. Toronto is a significantly more populated place than Melbourne or Sydney. Montreal used to be of similar size to the 2 Australian cities but the gap is now ~1 million. Montreal is denser though.


Ranked by Area

Melbourne 4,709,000 (2,880 sq km)
Toronto 6,837,000 (2,344 sq km)
Sydney 4,836,000 (2,194 sq km)
Montreal 3,750,000 (1,383 sq km)


http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

[tayser]

Originally Posted by Nite

Surface area of Both:
Greater Sydney: 12,368 km²
Greater Melbourne: 9,993 km²

here is Canada top 2 for comparison.

Toronto CMA: 5,903 km²
Montreal CMA: 4,258 km²

For a visual representation of what the diff between a GCCSA and SUA is, see here: https://blog.id.com.au/2023/populati...-largest-city/

Sydney's GCCSA includes enormous amounts of... national park.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Your Power Shift: Cities thread was one of the best ever. The last paragraph about São Paulo vs Rio de Janeiro sounds eerily similar to Toronto vs Montreal. It took a very long time but Toronto (now 53% larger) is dominant and unchallenged in every field. There's a perception that Montreal is a bigger draw for international tourism but even that one is no longer true. Like São Paulo, Toronto has a lower international profile than you'd expect considering its size. I suspect it won't remain that way for either city. Toronto's star continues to rise.

That said, I would like to see more parity amongst our biggest cities. Having 1 huge city that utterly dominates is problematic on many levels; especially in a vast federation.

Another similarity between Toronto and São Paulo in this context it's how both started off as blue collar, industrial. "Sexy" industries such as finance, education or the being political centre were not factors. This industrial baggage of São Paulo gave it this chaotic, organic form, very different from other Latin American megacities with their monumental "grand city" form like Mexico City, Buenos Aires and even Rio de Janeiro.

Now, São Paulo is even dominant on politics despite never been the capital. Every single important (popular) political event in Brazil on the past 3 decades happened here. That's the place where big demonstration happens, where most of politicians gather when not in Brasília, where presidents celebrates their victories like Lula or where they organize protests (Bolsonaro, far-right).

That level of dominance São Paulo reached in Brazil and Toronto in Canada is indeed seems out of place in continental countries, specially in those two with a very decent network of smaller metropolises and wealth spread out for most of territory. Maybe that's due US bias making us believe their very decentralized urban hierarchy is the only path for continental countries. I see some positive though.

P.S. Another similarity between São Paulo and Toronto is that both are protected by a network of a very dynamic network of smaller urban areas, preventing them to lose their assets, specially manufacturing and logistic to places far away (as it happened to pretty much every Northern US metropolis). They simply realocate to just outside the metro area instead of going to the other side of the country. São Paulo has its Macrometropolitan Area with 33 million people and GGH with 10-11 million. With such powerful buffer zone, it's impossible for those two to lose ground inside their respective countries.

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by Docere

1861

Melbourne 139,916
Sydney 95,789

1871

Melbourne 206,780
Sydney 137,776

1881

Melbourne 282,947
Sydney 224,939

That's crazy. in 1871 Montreal had like 100,000 while Toronto was just over 50,000, and Canada had double the population of Australia and was much more established.

[Acajack]

As I said, it's hard to compare like apples to apples. Demographia's methodology doesn't work for my metro area (Ottawa-Gatineau) for example and arbitrarily excludes legit parts of the urban area due to green space that is apparently a few hundred metres too wide.

Toronto is quite a bit larger than the other three for sure, but Sydney and Melbourne aren't over one quarter larger than Montreal.

Originally Posted by isaidso

True although urban area tables can be helpful. I'll re-produce the one from Demographia. Toronto is a significantly more populated place than Melbourne or Sydney. Montreal used to be of similar size to the 2 Australian cities but the gap is now ~1 million. Montreal is denser though.


Ranked by Area

Melbourne 4,709,000 (2,880 sq km)
Toronto 6,837,000 (2,344 sq km)
Sydney 4,836,000 (2,194 sq km)
Montreal 3,750,000 (1,383 sq km)


http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

[Acajack]

St-Hyacinthe, Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Granby which are never part of the Montreal metro area when it's discussed, are the types of places that are generally included for other cities' metros.

Even without them, Montreal's official metro population is still 4.5 million.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As I said, it's hard to compare like apples to apples. Demographia's methodology doesn't work for my metro area (Ottawa-Gatineau) for example and arbitrarily excludes legit parts of the urban area due to green space that is apparently a few hundred metres too wide.

Toronto is quite a bit larger than the other three for sure, but Sydney and Melbourne aren't over one quarter larger than Montreal.

I have e-mailed Demographia owner about some specific cases years ago. I guess it was Detroit (without Ann Arbor) and Cleveland (without Akron) for which he used a very strict definition while in others he was more generous (bringing Washington and Baltimore together, for instance). He answered me, thanked me and corrected right on his next edition. He seems very open.

Alternatively, we have the City Population list: http://citypopulation.de/en/world/agglomerations/ . It's messier than Demographia as they mix urban area and metro area concepts. Toronto is there with 7.550 million, Melbourne 4.950 mi, Sydney 4.925 mi and Montreal 4.375 mi.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by isaidso

That said, I would like to see more parity amongst our biggest cities. Having 1 huge city that utterly dominates is problematic on many levels; especially in a vast federation.

There's some scholarship that suggests that U.S.-Germany-China type population/wealth distributions, with multiple power nodes, are better for economic growth than France-UK-Japan type centralized distributions.

I could see Toronto's rise as potentially challenging for Canada's overall economic growth. In an Anglosphere-dominated world, you have Toronto, and everywhere else is problematic. Montreal is the "wrong" language/culture, Vancouver ultra-isolated and ridiculous income-housing ratios, and everywhere else is really cold. Winnipeg and Edmonton aren't really like Nashville or Stuttgart. Multinationals don't have the menu of options like in the U.S. It creates inefficiencies.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's some scholarship that suggests that U.S.-Germany-China type population/wealth distributions, with multiple power nodes, are better for economic growth than France-UK-Japan type centralized distributions.

I could see Toronto's rise as potentially challenging for Canada's overall economic growth. In an Anglosphere-dominated world, you have Toronto, and everywhere else is problematic. Montreal is the "wrong" language/culture, Vancouver ultra-isolated and ridiculous income-housing ratios, and everywhere else is really cold. Winnipeg and Edmonton aren't really like Nashville or Stuttgart. Multinationals don't have the menu of options like in the U.S. It creates inefficiencies.

France and Japan grew like crazy from post-war up to the oil-shock, Japan way after that.

Italy is polycentric and could be describe as a success or a failure depending on each decade you're looking at. Decentralized Germany had a terrible economic period between the 1990's-2000's. China had the most fantastic economic growth the world has ever seen and now it's most likely posed to get into a slow economic growth model just like Japan.

And not to mention of definitions: if you combine Osaka and Nagoya regions (2nd and 3rd place) they have a population very close to Tokyo's. One could argue that's decentralized at least compared to Britain, France, Russia or Argentina.

I'm not familiar with this study but I don't think centralization or decentralization explain economic success or failure. There are tons of other factors on playing. Many people also argue the lack of a German metropolis rivalling London and Paris damages Germany.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's some scholarship that suggests that U.S.-Germany-China type population/wealth distributions, with multiple power nodes, are better for economic growth than France-UK-Japan type centralized distributions.

I could see Toronto's rise as potentially challenging for Canada's overall economic growth. In an Anglosphere-dominated world, you have Toronto, and everywhere else is problematic. Montreal is the "wrong" language/culture, Vancouver ultra-isolated and ridiculous income-housing ratios, and everywhere else is really cold. Winnipeg and Edmonton aren't really like Nashville or Stuttgart. Multinationals don't have the menu of options like in the U.S. It creates inefficiencies.

I can definitely see this but there are a couple more things to consider.

For starters, anything economic that is coming out of francophone Canada (between a fifth and a quarter of the country) won't be based in Toronto but rather in Montreal or within striking distance of it. Even I am surprised at how rare francophones are in Toronto-based corporate boardrooms and there are effectively no francophone-controlled Canadian corporations based in Toronto.

Beyond that, there are other economic niches that other cities have like energy in Calgary, Asian trade in Vancouver and even fisheries and other sea-related economic activity (shipbuilding) in Halifax.

Granted, some of the aspects of these aren't necessarily huge but the populations of some of the regions with these niches isn't huge either.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Another similarity between Toronto and São Paulo in this context it's how both started off as blue collar, industrial. "Sexy" industries such as finance, education or the being political centre were not factors. This industrial baggage of São Paulo gave it this chaotic, organic form, very different from other Latin American megacities with their monumental "grand city" form like Mexico City, Buenos Aires and even Rio de Janeiro....

P.S. Another similarity between São Paulo and Toronto is that both are protected by a network of a very dynamic network of smaller urban areas, preventing them to lose their assets, specially manufacturing and logistic to places far away (as it happened to pretty much every Northern US metropolis). They simply realocate to just outside the metro area instead of going to the other side of the country. São Paulo has its Macrometropolitan Area with 33 million people and GGH with 10-11 million. With such powerful buffer zone, it's impossible for those two to lose ground inside their respective countries.

Yup, that sounds accurate from a Toronto pov.

I'd say that Toronto, or more accurately the GTA plus Southwestern Ontario, is the only part of Canada that is competitive for value-added export manufacturing. It has a lot of different, smaller cities to choose from, each with a manufacturing base, and based on the fact that it's a peninsula that juts into the heart of the US Midwest it's close to major markets.

Montreal is really the only other major Canadian city that has what I would consider a real "city region" as Jane Jacobs defined it in her book "Cities and the Wealth of Nations". There are a collection of smaller cities, particularly to the east in the Monteregie area that have a population base and good links to the city and to other places. It's smaller and less developed than the area around Toronto, though.

The other major Canadian cities are very isolated and surrounded by, in many cases, almost nothing. Ottawa, for example, is not even in a particularly unpopulated or remote part of the country but Ottawa and Gatineau, across the river, don't have a standalone city of 50,000+ (the size where you could locate medium-sized industry and hire skilled workers locally) within 75 km in any direction.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

P.S. Another similarity between São Paulo and Toronto is that both are protected by a network of a very dynamic network of smaller urban areas, preventing them to lose their assets, specially manufacturing and logistic to places far away (as it happened to pretty much every Northern US metropolis). They simply realocate to just outside the metro area instead of going to the other side of the country. São Paulo has its Macrometropolitan Area with 33 million people and GGH with 10-11 million. With such powerful buffer zone, it's impossible for those two to lose ground inside their respective countries.

All of the cities in the Northeast and Great Lakes region of the United States have comparable buffer zones. Detroit's 200 mile population radius is almost certainly larger than Toronto's.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Acajack

As I said, it's hard to compare like apples to apples. Demographia's methodology doesn't work for my metro area (Ottawa-Gatineau) for example and arbitrarily excludes legit parts of the urban area due to green space that is apparently a few hundred metres too wide.

Toronto is quite a bit larger than the other three for sure, but Sydney and Melbourne aren't over one quarter larger than Montreal.

Well yes, all tables require the reader to understand what they're saying and what they're not based on the criteria used to arrive at figures. They should never be taken as gospel; which, frustratingly, a lot of people seem to do.

The takeaway from the Demographia table isn't that Sydney and Melbourne are a quarter larger than Montreal. It's that, based on the Demographia criteria, they are. But also, being cognizant that there are substantial populations connected to Montreal that were excluded.

Originally Posted by Yuri

I have e-mailed Demographia owner about some specific cases years ago. I guess it was Detroit (without Ann Arbor) and Cleveland (without Akron) for which he used a very strict definition while in others he was more generous (bringing Washington and Baltimore together, for instance). He answered me, thanked me and corrected right on his next edition. He seems very open.

Alternatively, we have the City Population list: http://citypopulation.de/en/world/agglomerations/ . It's messier than Demographia as they mix urban area and metro area concepts. Toronto is there with 7.550 million, Melbourne 4.950 mi, Sydney 4.925 mi and Montreal 4.375 mi.

Good that he's open to his data being challenged. It increases the integrity of what he's publishing. I do use city population.de as well but wish they listed Area and Population Density for all the agglomerations. It's included for some but not others making comparisons difficult.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

All of the cities in the Northeast and Great Lakes region of the United States have comparable buffer zones. Detroit's 200 mile population radius is almost certainly larger than Toronto's.

A buffer made by weaker cities that were rusting like their main metropolis. Campinas, Jundiaí, Sorocaba that surrounds São Paulo are all wealth, dynamic and fast-growing metro areas.

New York upstate, for instance, had Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo. As New York deindustrialize, they were not an option. They sent all their manufacturing (or whatever the industry) to Sun Belt as all the northern cities did, hence they stagnated/shrank.

Deindustrialization happened much later in Brazil and São Paulo was hit massively as well (virtually half of Brazilian industrial output was there around that time). However it didn't send its assets to several hundreds kilometers away: it simply sent it 100 km north, east, west to Campinas/Jundiaí, São José dos Campos, Sorocaba, big metropolitan areas on their own, but firmly locked into São Paulo gravitational pull. That's obviously shielded São Paulo from any side effect and it quietly moved into services, finance, healthcare, education and barely noticed the massive deindustrialize it went through.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

A buffer made by weaker cities that was rusting like their main metropolis. Campinas, Jundiaí, Sorocaba that surrounds São Paulo are all wealth, dynamic and fast-growing metro areas.

New York upstate, for instance, had Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo. As New York deindustrialize, they were not an option. They sent all their manufacturing (or whatever the industry) to Sun Belt as all the northern cities did, hence they stagnated/shrank.

This process happened later in Brazil, but São Paulo deindustrialized badly as well, but it didn't send its assets to several hundreds kilometers away: it simply sent it 100 km north, west to Campinas/Jundiaí, Sorocaba, big metropolitan areas on their own, but firmly locked into São Paulo sphere, the state capital. That's obviously shielded São Paulo from any side effect and it quietly moved into services, finance, healthcare, education and barely noticed the massive deindustrialize it went through.

This isn't really accurate. Legacy U.S. manufacturing was mostly sent to other countries (including Canada and Mexico), not to other regions in the United States. Sun Belt cities mostly benefited from foreign manufacturing companies that wanted to establish outposts in the United States while avoiding the regions with strong unionized labor cultures (mostly the Northeast and Midwest). That's why the foreign automakers have plants in the southeastern U.S., but the Detroit automakers mostly do not. The UAW would never allow the Detroit automakers to build a non-union plant in the United States, but German and Japanese automakers don't have to deal with the UAW. Being far away from Detroit's union labor culture is a plus for them.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There's some scholarship that suggests that U.S.-Germany-China type population/wealth distributions, with multiple power nodes, are better for economic growth than France-UK-Japan type centralized distributions.

I could see Toronto's rise as potentially challenging for Canada's overall economic growth. In an Anglosphere-dominated world, you have Toronto, and everywhere else is problematic. Montreal is the "wrong" language/culture, Vancouver ultra-isolated and ridiculous income-housing ratios, and everywhere else is really cold. Winnipeg and Edmonton aren't really like Nashville or Stuttgart. Multinationals don't have the menu of options like in the U.S. It creates inefficiencies.

Although there's the argument that polycentric is economically beneficial, having significant population clusters in multiple regions is politically, socially, and culturally important as well. In the Canadian context, we're really talking about the populated south. North of 60 won't get properly integrated into the country and time soon; if ever. It's too isolated and the climate too harsh.

In our south, the gaping regional hole is Northern Ontario. The rest holds promise. The prairies may have harsh winters but the Calgary - Edmonton corridor is the wealthiest in Canada, has strong institutions, a solid corporate base, and 3.3 million people. It's absolutely building enough critical mass where it's self sustaining and able to attract global talent and capital. No population cluster rivals Toronto in heft but it's a counter balance nonetheless. It grows faster than Toronto so its clout should increase over the long term. The question is whether Saskatchewan and Manitoba can follow in Alberta's footsteps. Maybe, maybe not.

Vancouver/Vancouver Island is no more isolated than Seattle. It's expensive but droves of people head there any way. The BC Interior is growing rapidly too. Kelowna was the fastest growing metropolitan area in Canada. Montreal may not appeal to some anglophones but people of numerous stripes move there. Montreal probably added 70,000+ people last year.

The Maritimes will likely attain critical mass over the coming decades. They're southern but have historically lacked the demography to matter in the grand scheme of things. It will take a long time but, it too, will grow into another regional counter balance. The region has cultural and historic appeal and the climate is quite good by Canadian standards. Halifax has milder winters than Toronto.

Foreigners tend to be puzzlingly dismissive about what lies beyond Toronto. Canada is dominated by Toronto but there are loads of demographic, economic, political, and/or cultural counter balances either in existence or on the horizon. That's good for national cohesion, gives a voice to most of our regions, and offers Canadians more options.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

They sent all their manufacturing (or whatever the industry) to Sun Belt as all the northern cities did, hence they stagnated/shrank.

The continued underestimating of how industrial automation also DECIMATED rustbelt employment.

In 1970, US Steel's Gary Works employed 30,000 men with solid union jobs.

That mill singularly propped up the entire economy of the city.

Today, it's still the largest steel mill in the nation, but only employs around 3,000 people.

Not all of the industry left. A lot of it simply didn't need people anymore.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

The continued underestimating of how industrial automation also DECIMATED rustbelt employment.

In 1970, US Steel's Gary Works employed 30,000 men with solid union jobs.

That mill singularly propped up the entire economy of the city.

Today, it's still the largest steel mill in the nation, but only employs around 3,000 people.

Not all of the industry left. A lot of it simply didn't need people anymore.

Yes, I forgot to mention automation in my response above but that was also a major factor.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Deindustrialization happened much later in Brazil and São Paulo was hit massively as well (virtually half of Brazilian industrial output was there around that time). However it didn't send its assets to several hundreds kilometers away: it simply sent it 100 km north, east, west to Campinas/Jundiaí, São José dos Campos, Sorocaba, big metropolitan areas on their own, but firmly locked into São Paulo gravitational pull. That's obviously shielded São Paulo from any side effect and it quietly moved into services, finance, healthcare, education and barely noticed the massive deindustrialize it went through.

On this front, what happened to Toronto is quite similar to São Paulo. As with most cities Toronto had quite a bit of industry within the city itself historically but towards the latter part of the 20th century it started to migrate away from the city as the city economy became more focused on services and city residents complained about industry due to pollution, etc.

In the case of Toronto (and São Paulo) and unlike the US rust belt, industry that was in Toronto itself simply relocated to other parts of the Greater Toronto Area or a bit further in southern Ontario. Not to other parts of Canada and not that much to places abroad. The Canada-US border insulated southern Ontario from rust belt decline.

Now, due to greater and freer international trade, industrial southern Ontario did end up taking a hit eventually, though it was much later and not as severe as what hit its American neighbours across the border.

(The Canadian government also has a keen interest in keeping southern Ontario healthy as it is the country's economic heartland and the largest concentration of voters in Canada. Whereas the US government has to juggle more balanced regional pressures across the country, plus it tends to be more Darwinistic than Canada when it comes to economic policy.)