Quietly Shrinking Cities
Canadian Urban Population Loss in an Age of Growth
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At 5 percent, Canada's population growth was the highest of all G7 countries when the most recent census was taken. But only a handful of large cities drove that growth, attracting human and monetary capital from across the country and leaving myriad social, economic, and environmental challenges behind.
Quietly Shrinking Cities investigates a trend that has been largely overlooked: over 20 percent of Canadian cities shrank between 2011 and 2016, and twice that proportion grew more slowly than the national average. Yet continuous, ubiquitous growth is considered normal, and policy and planning professionals have had little success in managing the practical challenges associated with population loss. Declining birth rates and an aging population only compound the phenomenon.
This meticulous work demonstrates that shrinking cities need to rethink their planning and development strategies in response to a new demographic reality, questioning whether population loss and prosperity are indeed mutually exclusive.
About this Author
Maxwell Hartt is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen's University, Kingston. He is a former Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Management Board of the Shrinking Cities International Research Network.
Reviews
[Quietly Shrinking Cities] presents a meticulous study of why people leave a city or have fewer children, causing the population to decline.
Hartt presents a careful view of the current state of urban growth and suggests some possible outcomes for the future.
Hartt shines a light on a phenomenon that many of us urban and housing nerds don't think about often.
Hartt ranges across the wide scope of key indicators from immigration to environmentalism. This is an interesting read for anyone concerned with the fate of our urban places.
Hartt explores the broad outlines of the [shrinking cities] phenomenon and searches for some of its causes, which include deindustrialization, globalization, and the rise of the tertiary economy in major centres. On the whole this is a well-written, companionable study.
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