Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
It could be construed as disingenuous to bring up the GGH in the conversation around city construction, when the GGH covers a very large area (20x that of London) covering areas with very little infrastructure or connective interaction to Toronto. There is little to dispute about the growth of Toronto and other parts of Canada, but it is far from alone in experiencing strong growth.
More important to the conversation is how much new or poorly allocated new housing is being delivered relative to population growth in cities.
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Yeah, although the Toronto is CMA is too small (Oshawa is definitely part of the metro area), the GGH is too big. There might be a few commuters taking the GO Train to Downtown Toronto from Kitchener, but it's a drop in the bucket. The overwhelming majority of Waterloo Region residents do not cross the Niagara Escarpment during their commutes. You can make a case for including Hamilton in the Metro area but most Hamilton residents commute to Burlington, and to a lesser extent Oakville and Mississauga. Those are legit Toronto suburbs, so I suppose it's ok to include it in the metro area, but still rather few commute to Toronto proper. So I would lean towards including it, but it's not a definite yes. Similarly, Barrie residents mostly seem to commute to northern suburbs of Toronto. Niagara Region residents mostly work within Niagara Region, with a few commuting to Hamilton, but numbers going into the GTA are minimal. Guelph and Peterborough are major employment centers too, most of their residents work there rather than commuting to other parts of the GGH.
It's fine to view the GGH as a Toronto-centric cultural and economic region. Kind of like SoCal, or a lot of American CSAs, but I wouldn't consider that to be an accurate reflection of the metropolitan area.