For all the talk about Toronto’s housing market and how overheated it is, and speculation that Toronto homeowners will find themselves with underwater mortgages once prices drop, there’s always one factor that’s given in support of it: Toronto is one of the biggest cities in North America and it experiences growth every single day. And yes, it’s true. More people relocating to the city means more money to support the economy, housing market included. Now, that arguments has never held more ground as Toronto has just become the fourth largest city in North America.
The news comes from a City of Toronto Economic Dashboard report, which states that Toronto has now overtaken Chicago as being the fourth largest city in North America. The results were based on the fact that Statistics Canada released their figures in a report last month, which stated that Toronto’s total population was now estimated to be 2,791,140. And simple math tells us that’s more than the 2,707,120 the U.S. Census Bureau reported Chicago as having.
If these stats are correct, that means Toronto is now the fourth largest city in North America, sitting behind Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles. Mayor Rob Ford tipped his hat to the numbers and said it was just another indication that Toronto is growing at a rapid rate, due largely to the fact that Toronto is such a desirable place to live.
“These population figures are another sign confirming Toronto’s steady growth,” he said in a statement. “Toronto is a desirable location for people to live and work. We are attracting people from across North American and other parts of the world.”
And he’s not wrong. New data shows that Toronto is growing by about 38,000 people annually.
But can these stats be taken at face value?
First, there’s the fact that it was the Mayor himself who expanded the boundaries of the city in 2009 – giving the polls a lot more land to work with than in Chicago, which as far as we know has never expanded its boundaries.
Then of course, there’s the fact that Chicago’s numbers were taken from 2010 – three years before Toronto’s figures were calculated just last month.
