From Toronto the Good to Toronto the Great …
I’ve often said that Toronto is turning into Canada’s Manhattan (especially when talking about the cost of housing!). Our city appears always to be growing and changing – with the signs of growth everwhere around us. From new roads, to croweded subways, to new vibrant neighborhoods where old vacant land used to sit – Toronto appears to always be on the cusp of booming.
I recently learned that this growth is very real and that Toronto really is coming of age. Allow me to share some cool facts I recently learned about our great city.
Population. Toronto is now the sixth most populous metropolitan area in North America and is now growing faster than any other North American city. The population of Toronto has grown by an average of 100,000 new residents annually since the 1980’s. The current Toronto 2.5 million population is on target to reach an estimated 3.1 million by 2031; the metro area current 8.6 million population is estimated to grow to over 15 million by 2031. For those of us property owners in this city, this raises an interesting question of where will all these new people in 13 years live? What will density look like? Will single detached homes be a totally unaffordable luxury?
Changes in Demographics. There are two driving forces in this city: Immigrants and Millenials. The GTA remains the destination of choice for new immigrants with over 30% chosing to settle in Toronto. At this point 46% of people in the Toronto area were born outside of Canada. Why is this important? Well I believe that once an immigrant community has a base in a certain city – future immigrants will continue to chose to immigrate to that city (especially if there are family ties), even if other ecomonic factors are at play. So I believe that in the near future we will continue to see Toronto an immigrant city of choice. And then there are the Millenials… As a demographic group they are a generational force that have redefined urban living in Toronto and they are one of the strong drivers of growth of the down town condominium market. Since Millenials like to live, work and play in the same neighborhood – we’ve also seen employers ensure they have downtown offices. Large companies like Coca-Cola, Cisco, Corus, Deloitte, Google and Telus have all recently consolidated their corporate offices within the downtown business district.
Global Recogniton. In 2017, Toronto was ranked as one of the top 20 cities in Merecer’s 2017 Quality of Living Ranking. This same year the Economist ranked Toronto the Safest City in North America. Finally, PWC named Toronto (alongside London, Paris and Singapore) in their top tier ranking of Cities of Opporunities report. The secret appears to be out… Toronto is a world class city.
The Airport. There are other indicators of a city’s growth and strength. One of them, I learned, is its airport. And Toronto’s Pearson International Airport is the fastest growing large airport in the world! Pearson has been growing at around 7% average annual growth and serves over 40 million passagers.
Education. Finally, any great city is driven by progress and innovation and great educational institutions are the cornerstone of that. Primary and secondary education in Toronto remains overwhelming served by public institiutions and Toronto is home to three major universities. The University of Toronto is Canada’s top ranked university and is consistently globally recognized within the top 35 by the World University Rankings. In the past 20 years, Ryerson University has doubled it student population and now has over 40,000 students enrolled.
All this is to say that I believe the growth in Toronto is driven by several forces and as we come of age, we should accept our status as a global city of significance. In the last century, because of its low crime rate, Toronto was dubbed “Toronto the Good”. And although we’re still humble Canadians, I think it’s time to accept and promote our new claim of “Toronto the Great”.