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+--- Thread: Population and Housing (/showthread.php?tid=303)
RE: Population and Housing - Viewfromthe42 - 12-10-2018
Waterloo let anxiety over no longer being a tiny town get in their heads (as if the 10th largest region in Canada could ever be considered a small town), and we saw their signs at 99,000 for ages before boosting up to 130,000 or so more recently. Equivalent would be Kitchener hanging at ~240,000 and then only switching when they got to around 320,000. I also don't know if the Waterloo number includes the student population, which is in the tens upon tens of thousands, and is present in the city on an annualized basis of still tens upon tens of thousands.
RE: Population and Housing - panamaniac - 12-10-2018
How often are the signs changed, about once a decade?
RE: Population and Housing - nms - 12-10-2018
Signs and "official" populations numbers are sometimes let to slide if the particular municipality is hoping to still qualify for funding or competitions at a lower tier (ie 75,000-99,000 vs 100,000+). You also get situations where Waterloo became a City with a population of 10,700 in 1948, while Milton today maintains their "Town" status with a population of 110,000.
Officially, Statistics Canada counted 104,000 people in 2016 while the City of Waterloo adjusted their "real" population to 137,400 after the Region estimated in 2017 how many students and foreign/temporary residents also lived in the City and the Region in general.
RE: Population and Housing - jamincan - 12-10-2018
Oakville is even worse. 190k or so and still a town.
RE: Population and Housing - neonjoe - 12-10-2018
Until 2012 Markham was still a town with over 300,000 residents. As a city it is the 16th largest in Canada.
RE: Population and Housing - neonjoe - 04-23-2019
I noticed that Kitchener is starting to update their welcome signs to show the population as 255 000. The one I saw was at Fischer Hallman Rd and New Dundee Rd.
I guess this means the city's official population estimate is now over a quarter million!
RE: Population and Housing - jeffster - 04-26-2019
(12-10-2018, 11:11 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: Waterloo let anxiety over no longer being a tiny town get in their heads (as if the 10th largest region in Canada could ever be considered a small town), and we saw their signs at 99,000 for ages before boosting up to 130,000 or so more recently. Equivalent would be Kitchener hanging at ~240,000 and then only switching when they got to around 320,000. I also don't know if the Waterloo number includes the student population, which is in the tens upon tens of thousands, and is present in the city on an annualized basis of still tens upon tens of thousands.
I know this is an older post:
As long as I rememeber, Waterloo's population sign was at 119,000 for the longest time on the Expressway then actually went down to 105,000 (or 110,000?). As for its population, its 2006 census was 98,000, 2011 was 99,000 and 2016 was 105,000 (rounding up to the nearest 1,000). Its population on some of the signs include student population -- many that are counted twice, once for the census (if they live in Waterloo) and once again as a student, and include students that don't live in Waterloo (students living in Kitchener or commute from nearby). As far as I know, Waterloo's current population (excluding non-resident students and no double counting) is about 108,000 at the end of 2018 -- but it's nowhere close to what they have posted and is off by a good 30%.
The Kitchener signs are based on the census closed to the nearest 1,000 -- though they do occasionally update. I think I saw a sign that said 255,000 -- which is 18,000 more than the 2016 census. Though from my information, the population is closer to 248,000 at the end of 2018 so perhaps 252,000 is close. It's population was 205,000 in 2006, 220,000 in 2011 and 234,000 in 2016. If the sign DID read 252,000, then it might be off by 1 or 2%.
Including a pic of the old Waterloo population sign (it's a few years old and has gone done since then).
RE: Population and Housing - UrbanCanoe - 05-01-2019
The Region has released the year-end population numbers for 2018... we're now over 600,000!!!
More information here: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regional-government/resources/Census/Population_and_Household_Bulletin-2018.pdf
RE: Population and Housing - jeffster - 05-01-2019
(05-01-2019, 04:54 PM)UrbanCanoe Wrote: The Region has released the year-end population numbers for 2018... we're now over 600,000!!!
More information here: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regional-government/resources/Census/Population_and_Household_Bulletin-2018.pdf
So does Waterloo (City) just have a massive undercount? Cambridge and Kitchener are both within margin of error, but Waterloo is over by a good 30%.
RE: Population and Housing - jamincan - 05-02-2019
Which statistic do you think has an undercount? Population statistics are actually really complicated and it's not at all straightforward what a population is for a given area at a particular time. When you delve into the methodologies of a particular census, it becomes clear where some of the differences come from. Typically the only comparable data is from the same census year to year. So, you can compare the Statistics Canada census data from 2011 to 2016. You can compare the Statistics Canada population and housing estimates from year to year. You can compare Ministry of Finance population estimates and projections from year to year. You can compare municipal census data from year to year. But you can't really compare across data sets, because the methodologies vary enough to produce differences, sometimes dramatic ones. The major factor in our region that influences differences in population is student populations and how the individual methods account for them.
RE: Population and Housing - nms - 05-06-2019
Similarly, the City of Waterloo has struggled with the fact that many students continue to be counted as residents of where they grew up rather than where they live temporarily for University. This gets complicated again when students move either between jurisdictions for co-op. An equivalent would be to compare it to the populations in cottage country. Eight months of a year, the population is a fraction of what it is from May to September. I can imagine that Statistics Canada doesn't want to double count people if they have multiple residences.
In the case of cottage country, a large part of their revenue comes from the tax base of the properties that are there, and in general, local government is able to provide enough services. Cottage country likely comes out ahead.
I understand that a certain amount of funding comes from higher levels of government on a per capita basis. If Waterloo were to get a higher amount of per capita funding by arguing that they have a student population that needs to be serviced, the "home cities" of this population could conceivably receive less funding, which the "home cities" might not appreciate if their funding were cut by a proportionate level.
RE: Population and Housing - kalis0490 - 08-04-2019
I was recently looking at some 2018 Statcan population tables. (The population tables can be found here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710013901).
I found that in 2018, Waterloo RM had an estimated permanent population of 579, 145 people. This is 10K+ people larger than the population of the city of Hamilton (former Hamilton-Wentworth RM), which had an estimated population of 567,979 people.
This makes Waterloo RM the 7th largest upper-tier municipality in Ontario, behind Toronto, Peel, York, Ottawa, Durham and Halton.
The population of Halton RM was 580,014 which is less than 1000 people larger than Waterloo RM.
RE: Population and Housing - tomh009 - 08-04-2019
And that's really the third-largest metropolitan area behind the GTA and Ottawa (Halton is a collection of smaller towns: Oakville, Milton, Acton, Georgetown).
RE: Population and Housing - jeffster - 08-04-2019
(08-04-2019, 03:37 PM)tomh009 Wrote: And that's really the third-largest metropolitan area behind the GTA and Ottawa (Halton is a collection of smaller towns: Oakville, Milton, Acton, Georgetown).
Plus the city of Burlington and is fairly large (185,000).
Also Burlington is included the Hamilton CMA, but it's not part of Hamilton at all. London also has cities/towns from outside their region that is included as part of the CMA (an extra 4 RM's for London). But Kitchener CMA does NOT include the entire region, Wellesley is excluded, for some reason.
RE: Population and Housing - jwilliamson - 08-10-2019
Statscan has created a new "Housing Statistics Portal" to consolidate all their housing information in one place.
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/subjects-start/housing