The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
I love the work that LSE Cities (London School of Economics) is doing with Urban Age. If you haven’t yet checked out their site, you should do that now. If you’re a city geek, it’s the kind of site you can get lost in for hours. Especially if you’re a sucker for great diagrams like I am.
Here’s one I found today that shows where cities are growing in the world:
Canada is a resource rich country. And one of the things that commonly happens to countries with a lot of resources is that they begin to myopically focus on the immediate gains from resources at the expense of long term innovation and economic development.
This is known as the “resource curse.”
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a report that looks at this exact topic: Canada’s urban competitiveness through the lenses of its resource economy and its knowledge economy. In the end, Richard Florida and Greg Spencer conclude that two can and should work together, but that we need to stop neglecting our cities:
“The oil and gas industry is not necessarily a constraint on the creative economy, but in the past decade or so it has come to dominate thinking around economic development policy-making. It is time to use the resources from the energy economy to build a more secure future as an urban knowledge economy. We can also use talent and technology to deepen and expand the resource economy.”
And one of their key recommendation is something I have argued for many times here on Architect This City:
“A New Federalism for Cities: It is time to give cities the taxing and spending powers they require. Cities must be given more control over their own destinies if they are to prosper in the 21st century.”
Now, here are a few interesting charts from the report.
This first one looks at the relationship between a city’s population and its creativity levels. The two are positively correlated, which means that, in this context, bigger is better.
This second one splits Canada in half – east and west – and then looks at how average income levels are affected by creativity levels (the knowledge economy). Here we see that in eastern cities, income levels are positively correlated with creativity levels. But in western cities, changing creativity levels have almost no impact on income levels.
Finally, this third chart compares the relationship between oil and gas employment (LQ = location quotient) and average income levels. What it finds is that income levels and oil and gas employment are positively correlated in the west, but there’s almost no relationship in eastern cities.
The way to read this chart is to think of the LQ as the employment multiple relative to the national average. So for example, a LQ = 10 means that the oil and gas employment levels are 10 times the national average. As you probably guessed, the pink dot way out on the right is Fort McMurray.
If you’d like to read the entire report, you can do that here. I hope that our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will read reports like this and spend more of his efforts investing in our knowledge economy – which means investing in our cities.
The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
I love the work that LSE Cities (London School of Economics) is doing with Urban Age. If you haven’t yet checked out their site, you should do that now. If you’re a city geek, it’s the kind of site you can get lost in for hours. Especially if you’re a sucker for great diagrams like I am.
Here’s one I found today that shows where cities are growing in the world:
Canada is a resource rich country. And one of the things that commonly happens to countries with a lot of resources is that they begin to myopically focus on the immediate gains from resources at the expense of long term innovation and economic development.
This is known as the “resource curse.”
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a report that looks at this exact topic: Canada’s urban competitiveness through the lenses of its resource economy and its knowledge economy. In the end, Richard Florida and Greg Spencer conclude that two can and should work together, but that we need to stop neglecting our cities:
“The oil and gas industry is not necessarily a constraint on the creative economy, but in the past decade or so it has come to dominate thinking around economic development policy-making. It is time to use the resources from the energy economy to build a more secure future as an urban knowledge economy. We can also use talent and technology to deepen and expand the resource economy.”
And one of their key recommendation is something I have argued for many times here on Architect This City:
“A New Federalism for Cities: It is time to give cities the taxing and spending powers they require. Cities must be given more control over their own destinies if they are to prosper in the 21st century.”
Now, here are a few interesting charts from the report.
This first one looks at the relationship between a city’s population and its creativity levels. The two are positively correlated, which means that, in this context, bigger is better.
This second one splits Canada in half – east and west – and then looks at how average income levels are affected by creativity levels (the knowledge economy). Here we see that in eastern cities, income levels are positively correlated with creativity levels. But in western cities, changing creativity levels have almost no impact on income levels.
Finally, this third chart compares the relationship between oil and gas employment (LQ = location quotient) and average income levels. What it finds is that income levels and oil and gas employment are positively correlated in the west, but there’s almost no relationship in eastern cities.
The way to read this chart is to think of the LQ as the employment multiple relative to the national average. So for example, a LQ = 10 means that the oil and gas employment levels are 10 times the national average. As you probably guessed, the pink dot way out on the right is Fort McMurray.
If you’d like to read the entire report, you can do that here. I hope that our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will read reports like this and spend more of his efforts investing in our knowledge economy – which means investing in our cities.
Each circle represents a city (well, metropolitan area). The dark green dot is the city’s population in 1950. The lighter green dot is the city’s population in 1990. And the yellow dot is the city’s projected population by 2025. Click here for a larger version of the map.
What’s fascinating about this diagram is that you can so clearly see how the most significant population growth has shifted away from the West to the rest of the world and in particular Asia. That is, those dots have more yellow than green.
We, of course, already knew this was happening. And population is just one dimension. But it’s still interesting to see this in diagram form. We are living through the rise of the East. And this diagram is a reminder of that.
Each circle represents a city (well, metropolitan area). The dark green dot is the city’s population in 1950. The lighter green dot is the city’s population in 1990. And the yellow dot is the city’s projected population by 2025. Click here for a larger version of the map.
What’s fascinating about this diagram is that you can so clearly see how the most significant population growth has shifted away from the West to the rest of the world and in particular Asia. That is, those dots have more yellow than green.
We, of course, already knew this was happening. And population is just one dimension. But it’s still interesting to see this in diagram form. We are living through the rise of the East. And this diagram is a reminder of that.
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