Urban Development, Ontario and Quebec: Outline and Overview

Transcription

1 Centre for Urban and Community Studies UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Urban Policy History Archive Urban Development, Ontario and Quebec: Outline and Overview L. S. Bourne and A. M. Baker Research Report No. 1 Centre for Urban and Community Studies September 1968 I. Introduction The objectives of this study are generally to examine the structure and trends of urban development in Ontario and Quebec. In this report, an attempt is made to: 1. provide a general overview of the scale and distribution of urban development in the two provinces; 2. discuss major data limitations affecting all of the subsequent reports in general. The basic rationale for the orientation and sequence of studies to follow is an awareness of the necessity of providing a broad and thorough analysis of past trends and present structural interrelationships in urban development as the foundation for growth forecasting. Only in this way is it possible to approach the question of forecasting from several distinct but compatible directions and thus to provide logical and consistent analytical models. Most of the reports, therefore, represent the gritty work of extensive data manipulation and analysis which is a prerequisite to intelligent speculation on the future. II. Urban Development in Ontario and Quebec: A Brief Overview (A. M. Baker) The rapid growth of cities during the present century can be viewed simply as an increase in urban population which sums the results of three processes: (1) urbanization the movement of people from farm and village to city, with a consequent rise in the proportion of city-dwellers; (2) immigration the movement of people to the cities from foreign countries or other regions; and (3) natural increase the surplus of births over deaths. In theory these processes could, separately or together, operate to cause a decrease in urban population, but that possibility seems remote at present.

2 2 Urbanization. The process of urbanization, unlike the other two, does have an intrinsic limit which, in theory, would be reached when 100 percent of the population was urbanized. For practical purposes the limit is somewhat lower, since the remaining rural and village population is unlikely to disappear completely from the countryside in the foreseeable future. Recent experience in Canada and in more highly urbanized countries suggests that Ontario and Quebec are beginning to approach the practical limit. The rate of urbanization is gradually decreasing as the limit is approached, and future urban growth will come mainly from the other two processes. Though the process of urbanization will continue slowly, it will affect farms and villages more than the cities. That is to say, the loss of a given number of people from the already small rural population will have greater consequences there than will the addition of the same number of people to the already large urban population. The process of urbanization involves, of course, more complex population movements than the simple ones from country to nearby cities. Often regional boundaries are crossed by people living, for example in rural Saskatchewan or New Brunswick who choose to move to cities in Ontario and Quebec, just as some foreign immigrants come from villages in Europe to Canadian cities. As a matter of convenience, these urbanizing immigrants are usually counted with the other immigrants who have come from cities rather than the countryside. A further complication occurs as some people move first to a small city and subsequently to a larger one in a multistage form of urbanization. Though the process is interesting, as a matter of convenience the second and later stages of these movements are usually grouped with other movements of population from smaller cities to larger ones. A more important complexity occurs as the cities reach out into the countryside and, in effect, urbanize the rural and village population where it is, as well as adding to it a new population of ex-urbanites who have moved to the country but continue to be part of the city. With the commuting radius of major cities now extending to fifty miles and beyond, the once-sharp boundary between the rural and urban landscapes has blurred to the disappearing point, and with it has gone the rationale for regarding a city as though it ended where its political boundaries end. As the cities extend over larger and larger areas, some of them inevitably coalesce to form still larger metropolitan complexes. These metropolitan complexes gradually replace their component parts the old cities, villages, boroughs, and townships as the coherent, functioning units of the urban system. Immigration. Urban growth attributable to foreign immigration has been particularly evident in Canada during the past two decades, though the rate of immigration has fluctuated markedly with changes in government policy, and in political and economic conditions here and elsewhere. In the period immediately after World War II, the policy of the Canadian government was to direct many foreign immigrants to rural areas. In a good many cases, they eventually found their way to the cities, and that policy was subsequently changed. In more recent years, the flow of immigrants has been overwhelmingly to the cities, particularly those of Ontario and Quebec. In addition there has been a good deal of migration within the country, mainly from the Atlantic and Prairie regions to Ontario and Quebec, and from the Prairies to the West Coast. Data on inter-regional migration are scarce, and for most analytical purposes, this component of migration has to be ignored. Natural Increase. The growth of cities by natural increase is now vastly more important than it was fifty years ago, when cities accounted for only a minor part of the total population. Now that cities contain most of the population, their natural increase is the major component of growth in the population as a whole and of growth in the cities themselves.

3 3 Thus, to a greater extent than ever before, the future growth of the cities depends on what they are like now and have been in the recent past, rather than on factors external to the urban system, and the focus of analysis must be on the urban system itself. The problem of rates of natural increase is a vexing one in any attempt to predict population growth, whether of urban populations or entire populations. Past attempts to project trends in birth rates have led to some embarrassment as passing years showed predicted rates of change in growth to have not just the wrong magnitude, but even the wrong sign. More specifically, in the 1930s most scholars agreed that the populations of highly urbanized and industrialized countries tended to stabilize and perhaps even to decline. Then the next two decades brought a sharp reversal of this trend in many countries, and especially in Canada. Now birth rates are falling again; in Canada, and in both Ontario and Quebec, they have reached the lowest levels recorded. Though there are many guesses about the underlying causes for these trends, it is fair to say that no one really understands them at all well. There remains a very high degree of uncertainty about future rates of natural increase. The Cities of Ontario and Quebec. What results have these processes of urban growth produced in Ontario and Quebec so far? In the world context, Canada is a highly urbanized country. For the world as a whole, the proportion of city-dwellers (taking only cities of over 100,000 people) is just over one-third, and is expected to reach one-half by In Canada, cities larger than 100,000 now contain about one half of the population, and if smaller cities are included, about three-quarters of the population is now urbanized. Within Canada, the major region composed of Ontario and Quebec, containing 64 percent of the country's population, is even more highly urbanized: over half the population here lives in cities larger than 100,000 and four-fifths of the population is defined as urban by the Census. Population figures for the cities of Ontario and Quebec as defined in this analysis tell the story. Table 1 gives population figures back to 1941 for the 63 cities which had grown to a size of 10,000 by the time of the 1961 Census. The pattern of growth rates reveals scarcely an instance of decline, but rather a collection of rates of growth which might be described in the inflated language of soap package size designations: large, larger, and colossal (Appendix VI). It is an almost inevitable result of these uniformly high growth rates that the large cities include an ever-increasing proportion of the population, as shown in Table 2. The result is that while these 63 cities account for 70 percent of the population of the two Provinces, the two metropolitan complexes, Montreal and Toronto, together contain 36 percent of the population and their share is increasing. At the lower size levels, other interesting changes in size distribution are taking place, some of which are summarized in Appendix V and treated statistically in the following report (Report No. 2). Boundaries of the Urban System. To focus attention on city-size distributions implies that the sets of cities considered constitute systems, and raises important questions about the validity of the system boundaries chosen. The same questions are raised in any analysis of sets of cities where a systems point of view is adopted. Strong arguments can be made for analysing Canadian cities simply as part of the North American system of cities. That no one has yet done so is largely the result of data incompatibility and a matter of time. It can also be argued that Canadian cities constitute a sub-system within North America which can be analysed as an entity in itself, and that approach has been adopted in other studies to date.

4 4 Among other interesting questions, these studies raise the question of the validity of analysing all Canadian cities as one system. The very strong regional contrasts which emerge suggest that regional systems of cities may be more valid sets for analysis in Canada. The cities of Ontario and Quebec, which the present study analyses, constitute one such regional system. Within the region of Ontario and Quebec there are, of course, important regional contrasts, most notably the French-English, cultural-linguistic contrast. For this reason, the analysis has proceeded by treating the two Provinces sometimes as one system and sometimes as two. The provincial boundary is by no means coincident with the cultural-linguistic boundary, as subsequent analysis shows, but it does provide a crude approximation and is useful also because it separates out various institutional differences which occur because the two areas are under different governments. TABLE 1: POPULATION OF MAJOR CENTRES: ONTARIO-QUEBEC Census Population (in 000s) Metropolitan Areas b 1968(est.) a 1. Montreal 2,541 2,437 2,110 1,745 1,472 1, Toronto 2,308 2,159 1,825 1,502 1, Ottawa-Hull Hamilton Quebec City London Windsor Kitchener Sudbury Major Urban Areas b 10. St. Catharines Chicoutimi-Jonquière Oshawa-Whitby Ft. William-Pt. Arthur Trois Rivières Sherbrooke Sault Ste. Marie Kingston Sarnia Shawinigan Brantford Niagara Falls Welland Peterborough

5 5 24. Guelph Brampton Cornwall Drummondville St. Jean Timmins Valleyfield Granby St. Jerome Other Major Centres c 33. Belleville Chatham Woodstock Barrie St. Hyacinthe North Bay Stratford St. Thomas Alma Thetford Mines Victoriaville Rimouski Brockville Joliette Sorel Sept-Iles Rouyn Owen Sound Pembroke Orillia Magog Trenton La Tuque Val d'or Lindsay Georgetown Rivière-du-Loup Cobourg

6 6 61. Noranda Kenora Asbestos a populations are estimates for most of the major urban areas. b. All metropolitan and major urban area populations have been adjusted to the 1961 census definition boundaries. c Estimates for other centres are tentative because of the difficulty of accounting for annexations and other boundary changes. Total number of cities = 63, compared to a total of 73 on the master list, which does not include major urban areas. The cities included in the major urban areas are: 1. Chicoutimi North, Kenogami, Chicoutimi, Jonquière, and Arvida are included in Chicoutimi-Jonquière M.U.A. 2. Grand'Mère and Shawinigan S. are included in Shawinigan M.U.A. 3. Fort William and Port Arthur have been merged to form the M.U.A. 4. Whitby is included in Oshawa M.U.A. 5. Trois Rivières M.U.A. includes Cap-de-la-Madeleine. 6. Welland M.U.A. includes Port Colborne. Source: Census of Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation; Estimates by the authors. TABLE 2 : PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION LIVING IN MAJOR CENTRES ONTARIO QUEBEC Year Total Population 12,741,715 11,495,303 10,033,.311 8,653,223 7,119,537 % Cum % % Cum.% % Cum.% % Cum % % Cum % >500, , , , Sources: D.B.S. Census 1966; D.B.S. Census Table 12; Table 1 - Population of Major Urban Centres: Ontario - Quebec, III. Preliminary Comments on the Concept of Urban Growth Complexes in Ontario and Quebec (L. S. Bourne) Dependence on published data sources immediately narrows the scope of most research to municipal units or aggregates of units. The quality of the results and the insights provided are similarly constrained. As a consequence, preliminary research parallel with the following reports is now under way to devise spatial concepts for analytical purposes which are broader, more flexible, and more appropriate to understanding the nature of the urban development in Eastern Canada. One concept is that of regional urban growth complexes. The definition of such complexes has two basic components: one, that it should reflect the diversity of urban infrastructure which is the basis of economic growth in any area; and two, that it should encompass the spatial confines within which location decisions tend to be essentially indifferent as to regional considerations in other words, an attempt to subdivide the space economy into realistic decision-making units based on a common and integrated urban infrastructure.

7 7 Infrastructure is a nebulous concept. It encompasses the full range of community facilities, including both the structures and potential for sustained economic growth. Included as components in addition to population size are the range and diversity of the local economic and industrial mix, social attributes and amenities, historical persistencies, and the depth of socio-economic opportunities. In this sense, the factor analysis results provide the common denominators of part of the existing urban infrastructure in Ontario and Quebec. In most instances, census reporting units underestimate the size of the urban regions which provide this infrastructure, either through strict adherence to municipal boundaries or the absence of the necessary degree of interaction in parts of the region to warrant inclusion in the census urban area. For example, in the Niagara area, the largest urban centre is St. Catharines, with a 1968 estimated major urban area population of 114,000. Close by are the urban areas of Niagara Falls (population 62,000) and Welland (including Port Colborne, population 60,000). Individually, none of these centres approaches the threshold population size for a metropolitan area. Combined, as a regional cluster of cities, however, the population totals about 240,000, or about the minimum level that Thompson and others have argued constitutes a minimum size for metropolitan status. Although these cities may not be contiguous nor highly integrated economically, and thus would not qualify as a metropolitan area by census definitions, the possibility for greater integration is nonetheless present. Commuting to work, for example, is generally possible throughout the area. Although commuting data are not yet available on a systematic basis, they would greatly facilitate the definition of these complexes except in cases where such interaction had not yet been realized. It is not particularly relevant that cities may lie in proximity through historical accident of location, or that their external economies may be distinctly different and largely unrelated at present. The concept of a regional urban complex is valid as one which delimits areas of future growth potential. Table 3 was compiled to illustrate the relative sizes of regional urban complexes in Ontario and Quebec in In almost all instances, the core of the centre is a major urban area (M.U.A.) or census metropolitan area (C.M.A.), to which adjacent unincorporated areas and urban centres have been added. At this stage, the definitional basis remains subjective. The new centres fall rather neatly into distinct size groups. Obviously, Montreal and Toronto stand out as national as well as regional metropolises of approximately the same order. The expanded Toronto metropolitan area, stretching from Oshawa to Oakville, has a 1968 population of over 2,600,000. Combined with Hamilton-Oakville, the population of the Lake Ontario complex rises to 3.1 million. On a second level are Ottawa-Hull and Quebec City, with populations of about one-half million and with relatively similar economies and spatial juxtapositions. On the third level are Kitchener-Guelph (including the Kitchener-Waterloo metropolitan area, 1968 population 275,000), London-St. Thomas (1968 population 255,000), Metropolitan Windsor (250,000), and the Niagara regional cluster of cities (St. Catharines, Thorold, Welland, Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, population 240,000). The latter group, which combines three census major urban areas, is the most difficult to justify under this definition, largely because of the absence of a core centre, and thus clearly ranks below the other three centres.

8 8 TABLE 3 REGIONAL GROWTH COMPLEXES: ONTARIO - QUEBEC 1968 Urban Region Ontario Population 1968 (est.) Quebec Urban Region Population 1968 (est.) 1. Toronto 1 2,600, Montreal 6 2,900, Hamilton 500,000 Lake Ontario 3,100, Ottawa-Hull 550, Kitchener-Guelph 2 275, London-St. Thomas 255, Windsor 250, Niagara 3 240, Quebec City 450, Sudbury 120, Saguenay 7 125, Ft. William-Pt. Arthur 100, Trois Rivières 100, Kingston 4 85, Sherbrooke 90, Sault Ste. Marie 80, Sarnia 70, Shawinigan 70, Peterborough-Lindsay 70, Brantford-Paris 70, Lake Simcoe 5 50, Cornwall 50, Belleville-Trenton 50,000 1 Toronto C.M.A., Oshawa-Whitby, Brampton, Oakville, Aurora 2 Kitchener, C.M.A., Guelph 3 St. Catharines, Thorold, Niagara Falls, Welland, Port Colborne 4 Kingston, Gananoque 5 Barrie, Simcoe, Midland 6 Montreal M.U.A., St. Jean, Beauharnois, St. Therese 7 Chicoutimi-Jonquière, M.U.A., Bagotville, Port Alfred The fourth group contains seven urban areas ranging in size from 80,000 to 125,000 population, including the Sudbury metropolitan area and the cluster of smaller cities along the Saguenay River centred on Chicoutimi-Jonquière. Finally, the fifth level ranges in size from 50,000 for Belleville-Trenton to 70,000 for Sarnia, Peterborough-Lindsay, and the Shawinigan-Grand Mère major urban area. In total, these 23 urban areas contain 9,150,000 persons or over 70 percent of the provincial totals. There are of course a number of smaller centres below 50,000 which could be added; however, the present sample seems to cover most existing metropolitan developments. This definition provides a more realistic view of the spatial distribution of existing urban infrastructure and thus of the potential for urban growth. It is also helpful initially in sug-

9 9 gesting reasons for differentials in growth spatially and hierarchically between Ontario and Quebec urban systems, and the recent growth performance of particular cities. In Ontario and Quebec, sharp contrast in the structure of urban development that is occurring, and is likely to occur, is fundamentally one of alternative growth centres to the Toronto and Montreal metropolitan areas. Outside of the economic region which is in effect the Toronto metropolitan area (2,600,000), new economic investment has nearly a half dozen alternative centres. These include the Kitchener-Waterloo-Galt-Guelph cluster, the Niagara regional cluster, the London metropolitan area, and the Windsor metropolitan area. Each of these clusters represents a viable locational alternative to the Toronto-Oshawa-Hamilton area, in part because of relative location within the space economy of southern Ontario and in part through the attainment of sufficient size to ensure sustained growth. In Quebec, similar alternatives do not exist. The Montreal consolidated urban region, considered here to include the census metropolitan area (1968 population 2,540,000) and surrounding environs extending to St. Jean, Beauharnois, and Ste. Thérèse, has an aggregate population of approximately 2,900,000 or nearly 50 percent of the provincial total. Next to Montreal in the urban size scale is Quebec City, which holds a position relative to the spatial economy of the province of Quebec much the same as Ottawa does in Ontario. Both are removed from the major centres of population and transportation networks in each province, and they are dominated and will most likely continue to be dominated by governmental functions. The next set of existing urban clusters in Quebec: Lac St. Jean, Trois Rivières Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Shawinigan Grand Mère, and Sherbrooke-Lennoxville, are substantially smaller than the four major regional urban clusters in Ontario mentioned above. Moreover, all three lack a strong central urban focus such as Windsor, London, and Kitchener-Waterloo in Ontario. As a result, the growth potential for Quebec centres outside the Montreal region appears to be substantially less than that for Ontario outside of Toronto. It is also interesting to note that sharp differences exist in recent growth performance among the different size groups. All the major centres, with the possible exception of the Windsor region, have exhibited rapid rates of population growth in the most recent census periods. Without exception, the medium-sized centres, and particularly Fort William Port Arthur, Kingston, Shawinigan, and Trois Rivières are areas of relatively slow growth. Similarly, the smaller urban centres generally exhibit modest rates of population expansion. Centres of a similar size to those in the last two categories that are experiencing rapid growth, such as Oshawa, Brampton, Guelph, Burlington, and Oakville in Ontario (see Table 1) are all peripheral to and are thus included within the metropolitan urban regions. The point is clear, there are no major urban centres in Ontario and Quebec undergoing rapid growth, outside of the major metropolitan regions. The next step therefore is to parallel the studies in this series, which are based on census and municipal reporting units, with analyses drawing on broader spatial concepts. One of these concepts is the urban growth complex and another is the formulation of a field of urban interaction. IV. Data Limitations For the factor analysis and regression study in particular, limitations on data for individual municipalities forced a restriction on the number and definition of urban centres included. This restriction appeared prominently in three situations:

10 10 1. Only cities with a population of 10,000 or over in 1961 are included due to the limited publication of Census data for smaller centres. As many of the 1961 centres had not reached the data threshold of 10,000 in 1951, the latter inventory is somewhat less comprehensive. 2. The census definition of Major Urban Area, which includes aggregates of cities in close proximity and which exhibit social and economic integration (see definition in the Appendix), is not a major reporting unit. Although it is felt here that these areas more adequately reflect the size of the urban complex, and thus are used in Table 1, they could not be used in the detailed analysis again because of the absence of data. For example, in the basic data inventory, Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi North, Jonquière, Kenogami and Arvida are treated as separate centres, whereas in fact they are considered together as a major urban area, with adjacent smaller communities, in terms of the population listed in Table Inevitably, time series data generally are incomplete and incompatible. This is particularly true for urban data because of frequent boundary changes and modifications in the type of data recorded. For smaller cities, the problem is usually one of annexation, while for larger centres it is generally one of redefining metropolitan boundaries. Thus the figures in. Table 1 have all been revised, except for some smaller centres in 1941 and 1951, to conform with 1966 census area definitions. Appendix: Definitions of Urban Areas and List of Cities Total number of Cities, Towns and Villages included in the study Ontario 55 Quebec 68 Total 123 Actual number of urban areas used in all data sources as units of observation and following aggregation to metropolitan areas: Ontario 40 Quebec 33 Total 73 Urban areas are given both a code name (3 letters) and a code number. The code number derives from the alphabetical ordering of the urban areas. Ordering follows the code name and not the actual name. Definition of Metropolitan Area (C.M.A.): In 1961, the Census Metropolitan Area (C.M.A.) in Canada was defined 2 as an incorporated central city of at least 50,000 persons and a surrounding area which together with the central city had a total population of 100,000 or more persons. That part of the C.M.A. outside of the central city must have (1) at least 70 percent of its labour force engaged in non-agricultural activities, and (2) a

11 11 minimum population density of 1,000 persons per square mile. A criterion of linkages among the major parts of the C.M.A. was also formulated such that at least 40 percent of the non-agricultural labour force in the municipalities adjacent to the central city should commute to places of employment in the central city or its immediate suburban fringe. Lack of data, however, made systematic application of the criterion impossible. Definition of Major Urban Area (M.U.A.): The only other commonly applied designation of census areas larger than the incorporated urban place is that of Major Urban Area (M.U.A.). These areas satisfy all the criteria for C.M.A. status, except the minimum size of the central city. As yet, scant information is published by the Census for these areas. 1 The actual number is different from the total because Census Metropolitan Areas are used wherever possible. The C.M.A. represents an aggregate of a number of unit areas in contiguity to a metropolitan centre. 2 Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1961 Census of Canada.