Toronto: Growth Forecast: 14.8M people in 2051
 

A new technical report for the Province of Ontario's Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing pegs the population of Toronto's Greater Golden Horseshoe to be 14.8M people in the year 2051.

The report link is here: https://www.hemson.com/wp-content/up...AL-16JUN20.pdf

The GGH is a rough proxy in area for Chicagoland.

The 'core' urban' area of Greater Toronto + Hamilton is estimated at 11,170,000

The GGH or commuter-shed of Toronto at 14,870,000.

What caught my attention in this as well is they peg the City of Toronto number at only 3,650,000, but other official forecasts peg it as high as 4,270,000.

At Toronto's current growth rate (2-year avg in 60,000 and change range) Toronto would reach the higher number in 20 years.

A lot can happen in 31 years...

How many square kilometers is the Greater Golden Horseshoe?

31,561.57 km2 (12,185.99 sq mi)

For context, that's larger than Massachusetts.

Not saying its remotely sane; but people do make daily commutes from the outer edges of the area.

Not just a few either, tens of thousands.

That's when commuter rail connections are mostly infrequent/slow at the outer edge of the network.

Which will change in the not too distant future.

While that scenario may have played out and still may, COVID has put a real wrench in those estimates. The reality is that Toronto's growth is almost exclusively due to immigration and the metro area is actually losing more people than it's gaining when taking immigration out of the picture. This is why other Ontario cities have experienced population booms like Kitchener and London.

Now that COVID has arrived, immigration rates are going to plunge due to health concerns and high unemployment and there was already a growing backlash against our high immigration rates as it was fueling our already high real estate prices especially in Toronto and all of ultra-expensive BC.

Canada's population growth is strictly due to our high immigration levels and accounts for a whopping 80% of our growth. Canada has the lowest birth rate in both the English and French speaking world.

There's no evidence I'm aware of to support the plunging immigration thesis.

In year I'm told Toronto's numbers will be down, and Canada's but by about 1/3.

That level is expected to return to normal next year.

I'm not aware of any backlash in Toronto.

I have a large social circle and consume media voraciously.

I have neither seen private/anecdotal evidence nor media evidence.

It could happen.

So could a lot of things.

But I find your thesis improbable at this point.

Yep, I mean, a LOT can happen in 6 fucking months. :haha:

I don't know how anybody could view such a far fetched forecast with any sort of value.

Who gives a shit about birth rates if you have a continuous flow of immigrants feeding your country?

I don't see how covid would slow down immigration to Canada, could you explain this better? If anything the real risk is that Canadians vote in a conservative administration that slows down Canada's flow of immigrants.

If they do that though, Canada's economy will completely crash and collapse. It's economy is so reliant on immigration at this point. In fact, a lot of western economies are.

Covid will slow immigration at least temporarily, but it will also slow internal migration, since nation-wide (or world-wide) economic difficulties tend to lead to less migration. That's especially true for the biggest destination for internal migration out of Ontario - Alberta - since the covid lockdowns/recession have cause energy prices to tank. I mean technically they've already been pretty bad for over half a decade and Toronto and Ontario have been growing faster over that period as a result.

How do you define "outer edge" and to where? I think most of the people commuting from Kawartha Lakes, Cambridge, Orangeville, Grimsby and the like are headed to employment areas along the highways in Toronto's outer boroughs.

Anecdotes are what they are; but I personally know a Prof at U of T who teaches at the downtown campus and commutes from St. Catharines 4 days a week.

Also a good friend is an executive at a firm that manages 3rd party call centres for a variety of service providers and he commutes from Kitchener-Waterloo, 3x a week (to Downtown Toronto) and works from home Tues and Thurs (pre-Covid).

Well considering that there was lobbying from NY state to extend the GO Train across the border, St. Catherine's is hardly far-fetched. Although they're in for a rude awakening if they truly think the trip would be 90 minutes. :haha:

https://www.wkbw.com/news/wny-develo...-in-90-minutes
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...he-border.html

Eh, GTAH seems like a reasonable proxy for Chicagoland, while GGH seems more like Chicagoland + Milwaukee + Rockford + Urbana-Champaign + South Bend

I don't think so.

The area of Chicagoland is:

10,856 sq mi (28,120 km2) That's within +/- 10% of the GGH.

The projections are badly outdated, at least for *where* the growth is occurring. Toronto is sitting at about 3,000,000 today and is likely to be at around 3,400,000 by 2031. 3,400,000 is the 2051 projection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the city is pushing 4,000,000 at that point if current trends continue.

Comparatively Durham is supposed to skyrocket in population out of nowhere *any day now* according to the projections but it continues to putter along at about 1/2 the projected rate.

Skyscrapers can also give the false impression that a city is growing. Missisuaga, Toronto's largest suburb of about 750,000, is building very tall condo/apt buildings at a truly dizzying rate but the city's population is basically stagnating. It's not population growth but rather a shift as where those people are living. The SFH that use to have 5 or 6 people living in them probably, at most, have 3 now and their kids have moved into condos but there has been little net gain in total numbers.

That, unfortunately, is very true. Over 50% of our economic growth since the 2008 Financial Crisis has been strictly due to real estate to house our immigration fueled economy. This has led to soaring house prices {especially in Vancouver which is truly the world's biggest laundromat}, relative declining productivity, and staggering levels of household debt.

But it has enriched a lot of Canadian households. We have family friends in very modest area of Etiobicoke, and they're sitting on a goldmine. That's their retirement and inheritance money. The old folks cash out and move elsewhere in Ontario, and maybe get a Florida condo.