From a planning perspective, Toronto’s low-rise Neighbourhoods are considered to be “physically stable” areas, meaning that any change must be gradual and sensitive to the existing scale. In practice, however, we know that these areas can be anything but stable once you look deeper.
A recent Globe and Mail analysis of census data for both Toronto and Vancouver once again reveals what we already know: Canadians are living longer, having fewer children, and consuming more square footage per person. The result is a declining population base in many — and in some cases most — parts of our already built-up areas.
The Globe compared figures from the 1971 and 2021 censuses for both Toronto and Vancouver, examining the population of “dissemination areas” – each one an area of a few blocks, typically home to about 500 people.
In the Vancouver region, 21 per cent of those areas declined in population over those 50 years, losing 76,424 people in total. Many other areas failed to keep up with the quick growth of the region.
In the Toronto region, the pattern is much more stark: Almost three-quarters of those established areas had declined by 2021, shedding a total of 540,789 people.
Here lies the irony: policies designed for stability led to losses equal to the size of a small city. And it’s one of the reasons why there’s such a groundswell of interest in intensifying existing neighbourhoods. It’s a way to correct for a demographic shift that has hollowed out neighbourhoods, closed schools, and left existing infrastructure underutilized.
Maybe we’ll even get them back to what they once were.
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