Melbourne surpasses Sydney in population

[Yuri]

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.

Even though Brazil is not a developed country, it was also hit badly by deindustrialization. By the late 1980's, manufacturing was 28% of Brazilian GDP. Now it's only 11%. Agribusiness, mining, oil all grew like crazy, stars of Brazilian rise on international arena on the 2000's, early 2010's while the country kept deindustrializing all over this period.

São Paulo metro area became Brazilian biggest city due industrialization (Rio was 8x larger than São Paulo on the first census in 1872), so needless to say it was hit even harder by this process. The city, however, avoided rusting by outsourcing things to just outside its metro area and of course, by becoming the country's primate city.

Originally Posted by Acajack

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.)

Same thing here. Even though deindustrialization tends to keep going, its critical phase is over. São Paulo and Toronto all dodged the worst effects of it, shielded by their broader regions. In São Paulo's case, the Macrometropolitan Area seems to be successfully migrating from manufacturing to logistics and endless urban sprawl: de facto São Paulo metropolitan area is already crossed the official region.

[ssiguy]

Sydney & Melbourne are not akin to Sao Paulo & Rio or Toronto & Montreal because in the last 2 examples, you had the historic larger city overtaken by the smaller one and the difference has only increased in time to the point where the discussion about which are the country's dominate city has long since been decided.

Sydney & Melbourne, however, are similar sized cities but neither is growing leaps and bounds over the other. Melbourne may overtake Sydney now but in just 10 years, Sydney could once again become Australia's biggest city and 10 years after that Melbourne could regain it's title. The two will be having this conversation for decades or more and the question may never be settled.

A more apt comparison is Dallas/Fort Worth & Houston. Like Syd/Mel neither is a capitol city and yet both are growing quickly and which is bigger often comes down to where the boundaries are determined but neither will ever become dominant over the other.

In terms of how the rest of the world views the importance of the 2, Sydney will probably always come out on top, Not only is it the primary air entry point to the country {which means a lot on an island nation} but also because it is so recognizable with it's famous Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Melbourne has no such icon that is automatically associated with the city. Yes, Melbourne has a fantastic skyline but if you were to ask 20 different people outside of Australia to name the skyline, you would get 20 different answers which is certainly not the case with Sydney.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

This isn't really accurate. Legacy U.S. manufacturing was mostly sent to other countries (including Canada and Mexico)

Immediately after WW2, Curtiss Wright moved their Buffalo operations to Columbus, Ohio.

Bell Aircraft developed the rocket belt (aka jet pack), Bell 47 helicopter (the helicopter made famous in the opening of TV show M*A*S*H), and X-1 plane that broke the sound barrier in Buffalo-Niagara, had thousands of employees but moved to Texas sometime around 1960. A huge loss for Buffalo and Western NY
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Aircraft

Buffalo lost some serious aircraft/aerospace industry to Ohio and Texas.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by isaidso

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.

I think Western Canada is pretty underdeveloped compared to what it could be, and the federal government is somewhat antagonistic toward Alberta. You can debate if this is good or bad with respect to climate change, but we live in a world where for example the USA is trying to get Venezuelan oil production up while Ottawa tries to suppress Alberta production and in general resource development is slow.

BC has a lot of development limitations due to the topography but could develop a lot more if it were development friendly. So many of the limitations here are self-imposed.

The Maritimes will never be a major region like Ontario but are underdeveloped compared to what they could be, and tend to be underrated. I think this is because they are split up into multiple small provinces more like US states and developed somewhat different from other parts of Canada, with more people living in clusters of small towns. The central Maritimes are more like Southwestern Ontario than Northern Ontario in a lot of ways (or maybe the best of both with nicer scenery but also the better more southern climate). Halifax-Moncton is not exactly Tokyo-Yokohama but likely has over 1 million people now. Halifax has a decent airport hub and is on great circle route ocean shipping between Europe and North America. I wonder if the region is going to be "discovered" more in the Northeastern USA; it seems to have become more known to Ontarians in the past few years.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Immediately after WW2, Curtiss Wright moved their Buffalo operations to Columbus, Ohio.

Bell Aircraft developed the rocket belt (aka jet pack), Bell 47 helicopter (the helicopter made famous in the opening of TV show M*A*S*H), and X-1 plane that broke the sound barrier in Buffalo-Niagara, had thousands of employees but moved to Texas sometime around 1960. A huge loss for Buffalo and Western NY
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Aircraft

Buffalo lost some serious aircraft/aerospace industry to Ohio and Texas.

From the Wiki entry, it sounds like the company went into financial distress and got chopped up in the 1950s. But yes, industry consolidation also was a factor in manufacturing job loss. However, that's just the nature of capitalism, and not really the result of regions poaching companies from each other. That is why it is important for a city to be an economic generator, not just an incubator of existing large companies. I would argue that inability to incubate new industries has been the true failure of Rust Belt cities since the mid-20th century.

[Fabricio JF]

Having visited Melbourne a few months ago, I'm happy that the city is now standing out in Australia and I had the best possible impression walking through its streets.

It's friendly and I remember commenting to the local resident: Everything you have achieved is due to hard work and there is no other solution for a city that wants to increase its prominence.

On Sao Paulo vs Rio, I currently visit Sao Paulo more, for reasons of feeling better served there in terms of services (International airport, advanced med, shopping, etc) and because I have also lived there.

In relation to Rio, there are business trips, but I don't have the same positive references as the other services I need.

[MolsonExport]

Calgary-Edmonton Corridor may be wealthy, but it is a fraction of the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Corridor, which is both wealthy and far more populated, and therefore, is the wealthiest corridor in Canada.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Acajack

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.)

Indeed, nearly 40% of the Canadian population lives in southern Ontario. And unlike the US rust belt there was no rival sunbelt which included California, which became the more high-wage and innovative economy (until 1980 or so, the Midwest was prospering enough; since then it's fallen behind). The Auto Pact was also beneficial to Ontario manufacturing.

Canada's best climate is BC but it had limited economic opportunities. Most move there for lifestyle or retirement. Alberta attracted economic migrants due to energy sector, but lacks the milder climate.

[Docere]

The relative positions of Sydney and Melbourne, as Australia's leading cities, has changed over time. In this respect their relationship is neither fixed nor subject to any natural laws of advantage or disadvantage. Nor indeed is the relationship between them and Australia's other major cities.
While Sydney was the first city of Australia (and the foundation location of businesses such as Westpac and AMP), it was overtaken (in population) by Melbourne during, and immediately after, the gold rush. Melbourne’s prosperity not only resulted in it becoming the financial centre of Australia during the first half of the twentieth century, but led to its functioning as the temporary national capital.
Discriminatory tariffs led to Melbourne having the highest concentration of manufacturing amongst the capital cities of Australia, a position which it currently maintains.
In the first half of the twentieth century a majority of companies had their headquarters in Melbourne. This situation was reversed during the second half of the twentieth century. As manufacturing declined and the property and finance sector expanded, the majority of large Australian companies located their headquarters in Sydney.
Melbourne’s ascendancy, in population, was effectively ended by the great depression of the 1890s, with 50,000 people leaving for other colonies. From the first decade of the twentieth century, the ascendancy in population returned to Sydney.

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/re...-overview.aspx

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Docere

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/re...-overview.aspx

Yesterday I was checking the comments on the Power Shift thread and one forumer said the best comparison wouldn't be Rio-SP or Montreal-Toronto, but actually DFW and Houston that kept pretty much the same size and importance over several decades.