23 replies to this topic

[Holden West]

I thought this was an interesting short article somewhat relevant to Victoria that covers everything from transit to sidewalk furniture.

http://spur.org/docu...article_01.shtm

The article is also copied here, followed by discussion:

http://forum.skyscra...ad.php?t=117486

[G-Man]

A couple of interesting point from that article. First of all Victoria is kicking their butt on car usuage. They still have over 60% of people driving alone into work. I think Victoria is in the low 40% range already. If we got the E&N running as commuter train we may drop it below 40%.

I think that the focus of transit on quality of life is an excellent point. In Victoria we are still overly focused on the commuter and not on increasing popular urban routes.

As I mentioned in another thread recently introducing a downtown circulator bus that is free would spur a lot of economic growth for very little investment.

The focus on the pedestrian in Portland is very important and I am shocked by the traffic death stat. to lower it by a third in such a short time just goes to show how important things like traffic calming are. Driving slower helps even when you do hit someone!

Anyways interesting article especially when you consider how close in size we are to them.

[m0nkyman]

Close in size? Metro Portland is two million. Portland proper is a half million. Compare to Metro Vic at 350,000 and city of Victoria at 75,000.

[G-Man]

Oh I was going by the article stat of the 3 counties being 560 000.

[aastra]

Comparing Victoria to Portland is about as silly as comparing Portland to San Francisco.



San Francisco is looking pretty big for a city with the same population as Winnipeg:

[m0nkyman]

San Francisco is looking pretty big for a city with the same population as Winnipeg:

I know Aastra understands the difference between the poulations of cities, and their corresponding metropolitan areas, but for those of you just joining us, there is a huge difference between the population of any given city, say Victoria (about 75,000) or San Francisco(about 750,000) or Winnipeg (roughly 654,000) and it's Metropolitan area population, which for Victoria would be about 335,000 and for SF would be about 4.1 million and for Winnipeg would be a shade above 700,000.

Victoria is at one extreme where it isn't even the biggest city in it's metro region, and Winnipeg would be near the other extreme where it is completely and utterly dominant in it's metro area.

[aastra]

Even though existing political boundaries would suggest Victoria's city population is about 80,000, the actual real city contains about 220,000 with the remainder living in suburban areas.

Whenever people make comparisons between cities they tend to make flattering comparisons, in terms of size. Vancouver compares itself to San Francisco or Toronto. Toronto compares itself to New York. Portland compares itself to San Francisco. Nanaimo compares itself to Victoria. In this instance, G-Man compared Victoria to Portland.

Actually, Victoria is a bit unusual in this regard because officialdom in Vic tends to like to compare Victoria to much smaller cities. For vision on the new arena project we looked to Kelowna and Prince George. That would be like Winnipeg following Victoria's example.

[G-Man]

I do understand the difference between a city proper and a CMA. I just had in my mind that Portland was a smaller city than that.

Just for the record Victoria has one of the smallest CMA catchment areas in Canada. I wonder in sq. km how it would compare to Portland.

I read somewhere once that if Victoria had a catchment the size of Halifax it would be larger than Halifax. Any truth to that, that anyone knows?

[Icebergalley]

Gee whiz..

I really missed the point of the original posting...

I thought the 10 points dealing with strategic policies were the talking points?

As a pedestrian who is now almost 2 years car-free, I urge cities of any size to chose item 2... "It all starts with pedestrians" as a point of departure for improving the quality of life...

[aastra]

I blame G-Man for taking us off topic.

[aastra]

I read somewhere once that if Victoria had a catchment the size of Halifax it would be larger than Halifax. Any truth to that, that anyone knows?

Halifax CMA is 7.9 times the size of Victoria CMA, or one-sixth the size of Vancouver Island.

But I believe we established one time (via Stats Can) that the urban population of Halifax is about the same as the urban population of Victoria. So most of the Halifax CMA is empty space.

Here's Victoria CMA times eight (roughly):

[renthefinn]

Victoria's CMA is larger than that triangle as it includes CRD watershed lands and a strip of land up to Port Renfrew, but that's close. Here's a pdf of Victoria's CMA http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss/Maps/ReferenceMaps/retrieve_cmaca_link.cfm?geocode=935

[aastra]

I needed a triangle shape for easy calculation of the square KM.

[Icebergalley]

You got me playing geographer again..

Here's the 2001 Census comparisions Halifax and Victoria..

Haven't found the urban core areas though but, I recall that downtown Halifax and Victoria are both relevately densely developed...

One gets confused when you look at the size of the land areas overall..

Have to look for the relative sizes of the core, the urban fringe, and the rural fringe... to continue..

But, here's the data for the moment..



Name Type Population, 2001 Total Urban Core Urban Fringe Rural Fringe


Halifax (N.S.) CMA 359,183 276,221 7,116 75,846


Victoria (B.C.) † CMA 311,902 288,346 † 6,118 17,438


Name Type

Population, 2001 Land area in square kilometres, 2001 Population density
per square kilometre, 2001 Population national rank 2001 1996


Halifax (N.S.) CMA 359,183 5,495.54 65.4 13 13


Victoria (B.C.) CMA 311,902 695.34 448.6 14 14

[aastra]

Are we saying almost 80,000 people in Halifax CMA are rural? Some of those people must live a heck of a long way from town.

Would the Cowichan area be considered rural? I presume it would?

[G-Man]

That density difference is amazing but as Aastra already pointed out the size difference is equally as staggering.

[Holden West]

Not the CMA debate again!

[aastra]

Does anyone here know anything about Halifax? When I was reviewing 2001 Stats Can numbers a while back I was surprised to learn Halifax city had a population of 120K over 80 square kms. By contrast, Victoria/Oak Bay/Esquimalt had a population of 108K over 37 square kms.

Assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that Halifax city represents the city core of Halifax, the density of Victoria's core was twice as densely populated.

Which is all the more interesting when you consider the fact that Halifax has considerably more midrise and highrise residential buildings than Victoria does.

[G-Man]

but does it? I mean if you add in James Bay and all?

[aastra]

Heck, maybe it doesn't. But it does have quite a few more people living in midrise and highrise buildings. Maybe the buildings just tend to be larger? I can't think they'd be that much larger. There must be more buildings.

population of each canadian city living in buildings of 5 storeys or higher (2005):

toronto: 982 705 - 21%
ottawa-gatineau: 112 470 - 11%
hamilton: 74 010 - 11%
london: 45 545 - 10%
winnipeg: 51 280 - 8%
vancouver: 147 675 - 8%
kitchener: 29 625 - 7%
montreal: 195 005 - 6%
halifax: 20 365 - 6%
quebec: 25 245 - 4%
calgary: 36 300 - 4%
edmonton: 33 225 - 4%
victoria: 9 485 - 3%
saskatoon: 6 295 - 3%
regina: 4 795 - 3%