Sunday, October 03, 2004

Calgary is sprawl-free

I know this is old news, but I was just reflecting on some of our urban issues and recalled a city official claiming that Calgary was not suffering from urban sprawl.

OK, here are the facts: Calgary's population density (number of residents per square kilometre) in 2001 was 187 - that's 951,396 people living in 5083 sq km. In comparison, Toronto's density is 793 - 4.7 million living in 5900 sq km. Montreal's is 847 - 3.4 million living in 4000 sq km. In a list of 30 Metropolitan areas in Canada, we ranked 5th in population and 14th in population density. But we don't have urban sprawl...

2 comments:

Karl Plesz said...

You're kidding, right? No I'm afraid Toronto was #1 in population and Montreal had the highest density. Winnipeg didn't even register......joking. It was 8th.

Karl Plesz said...

I know - I was just giving you a hard time. The stats say Winnipeg had a density of 162, definately lower than Calgary, but the lowest density award (of the 30 listed metro areas) was Saint John, NB at 37. I don't really know whether that qualifies it as having the most sprawl, as it only had a population of 123,000.