The GTA could be a lot more crowded in 2025
The GTA could be a lot more crowded in 2025
—Bloomberg’s estimate of the number of people who will live in the Greater Toronto Area in 2025. A population that size, according to Bloomberg, would give the GTA a greater population density, per square mile, than New York City’s metropolitan area. The Toronto area’s population as of the 2011 census was only 5,583,064.
What’s stupid about that is that right now the subways and buses are already overcrowded. And with so many pple getting a job is soooo much harder because there are so many other pple competing for the same jobs and that higher number will only make that much more difficult and I am seeing more and more homeless Canadians every month. That is just STUPID!
That’s not going to happen. There’s no way this city takes on an extra million people in 10 years. Quite simply, there aren’t the job, housing, or transport to support this. Absorbing that many new residents would lead to utter paralysis in this city.
I realize that for some people Toronto ends north of Bloor, but this article is about the Greater Toronto Area. York Region alone has room for a million people. The question is; do we want to be car dependent like LA or have a robust transit system like NYC? In order to have a transportation system with this capacity it will be necessary to lose the them-and-us mentality that exists between 416 and 905 and have a single regional growth plan.
What are you on about? I live in Scarborough.
The region quite simply has no capacity to absorb another million people in the next decade without serious consequences.
1) Jobs. GTA lags behind many other parts of the country. This is particularly the case for youth employment. And worse yet, a lot of the high-paying jobs we have are in the FIRE sector. A housing slowdown and the entire house of cards collapses.
2) Housing. Prices are utterly insane by any reasonable measure (Price-Income, Price-Equity ratios for example). The stock is crap. Developers still aren’t building family friendly condos or proper townhouse complexes. So we have lots of shoebox condos for singles in the core and cookie-cutter subdivisions in the 905 with massive traffic in between.
3) Infrastructure. The Gardiner is crumbling. Toronto alone has a half billion dollar road repair backlog. Transit infrastructure is hopelessly behind. Hardly any major projects will be complete by 2025. The Eglinton LRT, for example, has a 2023 tentative finish. I guess the TYSSE will be up and running. But how much does that improve mobility region-wide? The biggest project to improve regional mobility would be GO electrification. Metrolinx says it should take 10 years. Of course, the might not even start for another 10 years.
You think York Region along has room for a million people? Physically? Sure. But what do you think the state of York Region will be after absorbing a million people without the infrastructure, housing or jobs to support them?