A question of numbers

I'v been asked often how many people is there in Vancouver, how big is it, how does it compare to Montreal, Quebec or Toronto. So here are some numbers and statistics.

Let's look at the population of the city. Not the metro area or greater area, but the city.

Rank	Municipality	Land Area (km2)	Population 2006	Density
1	Toronto	630.18	2,503,281	3,972/km2
2	Montreal	365.13	1,620,692	4,439/km2
8	Vancouver	114.71	578,041	5,039/km2
10	Quebec City	454.26	491,142	1,081/km2

(the complete 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population)

Toronto is the most populated city followed by Montreal. Vancouver is 8th, just a bit before Quebec City. But the Greater Vancouver is over 2.3 million residents which is the 3rd most populous metropolitan area in Canada after Toronto (5.1 millions) and Montreal (3.6 millions). The greater Quebec City area is 0.75 million, which puts it in 7th place for greater/metro area.

What is interesting is that Vancouver is the most densely populated Canadian city with 5,039 people per square kilometre. It is the 4th most densely populated city in North America among those with a population above 500,000 — after New York City, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Vancouver is characterized by high-rise residential with commerces of the 1st floor. People do actually lives in the downtown areas, where often in cities, downtown is empty at night. Here is a very nice picture of downtown Vancouver at dusk from Magnus Larsson of Malmö, Sweden. Magnus is a Technical Art Director at Ubisoft Massive.

Vancouver has been debating "ecodensity" a lot recently. Ecodensity are ways in which "density, design, and land use can contribute to environmental sustainability, affordability, and livability." For example bylaws have changed in 2009 to allow laneway housing.

Vancouver is a city composed of a lot neighbourhoods, which is ofter refer to communities. Each communities a distinct character and/or ethnic mix. There are 23 communities in Vancouver. Some of the more known communities are, Downtown, West End, Kitsilano and Grandview often refer as Commercial area or The Drive. This is where I used to live. We are hoping to find a place in this area.

The other thing I would like to talk to you about is the population age. In statistic we use the median age. The median age is an age "x", such that exactly one half of the population is older than "x" and the other half is younger than "x".

	Median age 2001	Median age 2009	Variation
Toronto	35.8	37.8	1.9
Vancouver	37.0	39.0	2.0
Montreal	37.6	39.2	1.6
Canada	37.2	39.5	2.3
Quebec	39.3	41.9	2.6

Here is the complet table for median age for metropolitan area at July 1, 2001 and 2009 and its graphical representation.

What you notice is that Quebec City is older than Canadian median, but not that different from the other major cities. After looking at those numbers it wasn't explaining to me why I feel like Vancouver is a lot younger than Montreal and even more than Quebec City. The answer came from that chart in the article about the age profiles on the City of Vancouver web site

As you see the curves for Canada, BC and metro Vancouver are fairly similar, but the one of the city of Vancouver shows a lot more people in the 20-40 age groupe with a spike at 20. So the city itself has a lot more younger people.