Blizzard
New Member
I did some of these calculations, using 2024 estimates for population, industrial land (vacant and used), parkland and urban area for Edmonton and Calgary. The railroad areas are a harder information to get, but I wouldn't expect a significant difference between both cities to be significant.
Using that information, and considering that the accuracy might fluctuate, Edmonton is ever so slightly more densely populated than Calgary (3035 ppl/sq km vs 3005 ppl/sq km), which can be seen as statistically the same (~3000 ppl/sq km).
Doing the same estimates for Burnaby, Brampton, Mississauga and Winnipeg, we get to ~5700, ~3900, ~3800 and ~2000 ppl/sq km respectively.
I did not do it for Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal as these are obviously in a league of their own in the context of Canada. I might do it later.
The conclusion here is that both Calgary and Edmonton are substantially more densely populated than many think, both have a substantial industrial and parkland area (among the highest in Canada).
A number that kind of surprised me is them being about 50% denser than Winnipeg, and not as far off Brampton and Mississauga as I expected. It is still just about half of Burnaby's, which is not as surprising, but a shocking number nonetheless.
I've tried to do this myself a few times and always end up with a similar result, so it's awesome to see this from a different set of eyes. Everyone always rolls out the raw municipal boundary density number as some kind of "gotcha", but especially in Edmonton's case it doesn't paint the full picture at all. Then when you factor in above average industrial land uses, etc. I mean all you have to do is spend a few days in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg and it becomes pretty clear...