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Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 1:00 AM
memph memph is offline
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Historical Density of Montreal

I've always wondered just how dense Montreal was at various points in its history. I recently went through 1941 and 1951 census data to see how the density compared to today.

Here's a map I made of how various neighbourhoods' population changed from 1951 to 2011 (in percent).


(also compared Montreal to other cities on my blog)

So most of the older neighbourhoods lost a lot of population. In 1951, the inner neighbourhoods like Verdun, the Plateau, Hochelaga-Maisoneuve and the Sud-Ouest still held a good chunk of the metro population. I'm assuming the population loss was mostly a result of decreasing household sizes/decrowding. Even Outremont's population decreased, although I think the Hassidic Jews with large families make up no more than a third of the total populaiton. The population losses were greater in neighbourhoods like the Plateau than in most neighbourhoods in other cities that were built out around 1950, has it gentrified too? I know it's somewhat gentrified now, but at least originally, I don't think it was very poor. From what I can understand, the poorest neighbourhoods were originally closer to downtown and the Lachine canal, and the Plateau was initially middle class.

Although Montreal is quite dense today, with an urban area weighted density similar to that of San Francisco-Oakland and Toronto, and only significantly behind New York, it used to be quite a bit denser prior to suburbanization and decreased crowding/household sizes.

Density distribution by census tract.

The high density areas of Montreal to shift from 40,000-100,000 per square mile (15-40k per km2) to densities less than half that.

Montreal's urban area weighted density in 1951 made it a solid 2nd in North America.

Top five (density in people per square mile)
1. New York-Newark: 74,956 (excludes several suburbs, only includes NYC, Newark, Elizabeth and Hudson County)
2. Montreal: 38,433
3. Philadelphia: 30,602
4. Chicago: 27,099
5. Baltimore: 26,783

Aside from having quite a bit of high density neighbourhoods, Montreal also didn't suburbanize as much by 1951. Many American cities had streetcar and railroad suburbs that were less dense than Montreal's, with mainly single family homes on smallish lots.

Montreal would have been even denser in 1941. Many inner neighbourhoods lost population in the 40s, and of course there was some lower density development in the suburbs. Although Rosemont, Villeray, Parc Extension and a few other neighbourhoods that experienced growth then were built to fairly high densities (but still less dense than the Plateau), you also had less dense NDG, Dorval, Mount Royal, Ahuntsic, Longueuil and Laval experiencing growth.

The Plateau would have had a nighttime population density almost as high as today's Manhattan. I wonder how bad crowding was. And how bustling the city might have been?

I wonder when Montreal would have been at its most dense? The typical pattern in North American cities is you start off relatively low density when you're a small town, then get denser as you get bigger, and then innovations in transportation (first streetcars, then automobiles) lead to reduced densities.

During the 1870-1940 period, you basically had two opposing forces driving density in Montreal. Streetcars allowed the population to spread out more, but Montreal was also growing from a small city (141k) to a big one (over 1mil), which typically leads to higher densities. So I have no idea if it would have been getting denser or not...

Prior to 1941, there was no census tract data to rely on. There was a population breakdown by ward given for the 1931 census, but I have no idea what some of those wards correspond to.
https://archive.org/details/1931981931B381934engfra

What would Montreal have been like in 1870? I think a lot of the city from that time period is not that well preserved. Even the Plateau was only just starting to develop. Much of the city would have been the current downtown area, a lot of which has since been redeveloped into warehouses and office buildings.

Last edited by memph; Mar 24, 2014 at 3:38 PM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 1:14 AM
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Very interresting ! Much appreciated

Nuns island is quite impressive.

It was practically nothing 50 years ago or so.
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PROVINCE OF QUEBEC ==> 9 000 000
MONTREAL METRO ==> 4 550 000
QUEBEC CITY METRO ==> 878 000
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  #3  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 3:55 AM
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Good job,

Quote:
The Plateau would have had a nighttime population density almost as high as today's Manhattan. I wonder how bad crowding was. And how bustling the city might have been?
Montréal in the 40's 50's .


http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/201...t-1940s-level/

the ridership was extremely high before 1950.
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Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 12:53 PM
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Great work, thank you!

The reason for the decline is, as you suggested, related to inhabitants per dwelling. Although dwelling density has increased in many places you've looked at, the number of inhabitants per dwelling has decreased (smaller family sizes). Also, the average floor space per dwelling has increased.

My only constructive advice is to use metric figures. As a Canadian planner, the use of miles throws me off. In planning, we typically use density per square kilometer and/or hectares.
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Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 1:26 PM
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very, very interesting. Wow. Verdun really de-densified. A huge decline for Ville-Marie (downtown) despite the gentrification and condofication of downtown and old Montreal.
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Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 5:43 PM
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Just realized I messed up the numbers for Lachine, it actually gained population, although the oldest parts around Notre Dame still experienced significant population loss, up to 68% for one census tract.

It seems wikipedia includes Nun's Island as part of Verdun, but when you split Verdun into Nun's island and the older part, Nun's island had a population of 57 in 1951... so yeah, basically nothing, while the rest of Verdun had 77,391 (wiki says it peaked at 80k in 1954).

The transit ridership numbers seem believable enough. With around 2/3 of today's population, and a current transit mode share of 33% on the island, that means transit commute mode share might have been around 50%, maybe even more. Walking mode share would probably have been fairly significant. No idea about biking. Biking+walking today make up a significant part of the total mode share in inner neighbourhoods. Also not labelled on the ridership graph is the oil embargo, the spike it caused in 1979 is one of the most noticeable features of the graph, and ridership numbers never fell all the way back down once that was over.

By the way, I found the boundaries of the wards for 1931's census.
http://archivesdemontreal.ica-atom.o...treal-1930;rad

The densest ward was St Jean Baptiste which packed 31,579 people into 0.826km2 around Rachel/St Denis. Today, this area is home to 9,536 people.

Second densest ward was Bourget, north and east (real N&E, not Montreal N&E) of Parc Lafontaine. It had 24,100 people in 0.717km2 vs 9,188 today.

Third densest was St Jacques with 22,833 in 0.713km2, today it has a population of 8,517.

Fourth densest was Cremazie with 17,234 people in 0.633km2, today it has 5,587 people. It has nothing to do with Boulevard Cremazie, it's the area around the Habitations Jeanne Mance.

Fifth densest was St Louis with 17,627 in 0.706km2, today home to 8,648 people.

These five wards are contiguous, and had a population of 113,373 in 3.595km2, compared to 41,476 today. That's a population loss of 63.4%.

The ward boundaries don't match up with census tracts from 1941/1951 perfectly (2011 has data by city block so that was not a problem), but combining St Louis, St Jean Baptiste and Cremazie, they match up.

1931: 66,440
1941: 66,164
1951: 60,785
2011: 23,771

Makes sense I guess, you wouldn't expect things to get less crowded during the depression when little new housing was being built to accomodate the growing population, but then in the 1940s, that changed and population started to fall.
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  #7  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2014, 9:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport View Post
very, very interesting. Wow. Verdun really de-densified.
I guess I'm part of the explanation: I live in Verdun in a plex that we converted into a cottage.

In the 60's, there used to be 10 people living on the first floor apartment (I know because the house belonged to my in-laws) and at least 4 people in each one of the two 2nd floor apartments, so a total of 18 people.

My family of 5 (2 adults, 3 kids) now occupies the same space as these 18 people did in the 60's.
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Old Posted Apr 10, 2014, 8:46 PM
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I am actually surprised that Lachine registers a net % increase. When I lived in Montreal, (the then separate city of) Lachine would usually post declining year-over-year population statistics, due to de-densification of the eastern parts, notwithstanding greenfield and brownfield housing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachine,_Quebec

edit: the statistics bear that out:
1971 51,220 +2.0%
1976 47,542 −7.2%
1981 42,826 −9.9%
1986 39,850 −6.9%
1991 40,233 +1.0%
1996 39,910 −0.8%
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  #9  
Old Posted Sep 6, 2014, 11:03 PM
memph memph is offline
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Here's a more detailed map showing population change from 1931-2011 using 1931 ward boundaries.


The ward boundaries don't quite match 1941/1951 census tract boundaries (not a problem for 2011 since the 2011 census has data up to the city block level) so I combined some wards to compare to 1941 and 1951 population.

From 1931-1941, the city grew throughout, probably as new residents crowded into existing housing with little new housing being built. It seems only CDN-NDG and Rosemont experienced significant new housing construction.


From 1941-1951, population growth increased in outer neighbourhoods while core areas lost population to return to something around the pre-Depression populations.

http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca...opulation.html

Last edited by memph; Sep 7, 2014 at 12:51 AM.
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Old Posted Oct 3, 2014, 1:46 AM
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keep it coming. So interesting.
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  #11  
Old Posted Oct 3, 2014, 2:06 PM
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  #12  
Old Posted Sep 26, 2016, 1:36 PM
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Resurrected. I had to say it, great maps. You can clearly see the emptying out of the lower boroughs in favour of the northern 'suburbs'. The south-north shift was huge.
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