Population and Housing

[jeffster]

A lot of Census information doesn't make sense.

Take London for example, it's "metro" population includes places far outside the city, and also outside the region/county. Same applies with Hamilton (includes Burlington) and Toronto, of course.

Take this area, the metro population doesn't even count all of the region, let alone anything outside the region (and most fair comparison is London -- which, as I had mentioned, includes population base far outside the city and region).

As for the economic region, I have no idea how they came up with it. It would make sense if it was Kitchener-Guelph-Brantford-Stratford, for example. But I guess this is the way the government wants it split up.

Yeah, metro areas are always a bit handwavy...like Hamilton and Toronto are arguably the same metro area...because the GTA is crazy, it kind of just eats everything.

But something like London should be very straightforward, there's clearly a grey area--places which are partially independent economically but still have some commuters, but unlike the GTHA it isn't a continuous suburban area.

I think you're right on economic region though...KGBS would make more sense (assuming Kitchener includes Waterloo and Cambridge).

Ultimately, this is trying to put a box around humans, which is at best, tricky, and at worst pretty harmful, but even for that, the combination of KW and Barrie is strange.

When you travel west from Oshawa, 401-403-QEW-USA, you basically have almost 200 km of driving through large cities and urban sprawl.

It's unique in Canada, with a few places like it in some larger states.