SASKATOON’S GROWTH
City population numbers expected to slow
Get ready to grow, Saskatoon — but maybe not quite as fast as you have been.
A new City of Saskatoon report predicts Saskatchewan’s largest city will crack the 300,000 population mark in eight years and reach 380,650 by 2035. Those projections are based on an average annual growth rate of two per cent.
The latest estimate represents a downgrade from the last projection in 2012, when the city was forecast to grow to 385,411 by 2032, presuming a 2.5 per cent growth rate.
The city’s population is also expected to get older.
“As much as the population growth detailed in this projection will keep Saskatoon young, there will be significant changes in the aging population as well,” the report says. “The aging of the demographic baby boom (the population born between 1946 and 1965) will swell the population aged 65 and over to nearly double its current size.”
Saskatoon’s senior citizen population is expected to grow from 33,000 in 2015 to 56,000 in 2035, regardless of the overall growth scenario.
The city’s projection is based on growth from the 2006 to 2015 period, when the population increased by an annual average of 2.7 per cent.
If Saskatoon were to continue to grow at an annual average rate of 2.5 per cent, its population would reach 420,763 by 2035.
If Saskatoon grows to 380,650 by 2035, that would represent about six new neighbourhoods and require about 26,000 new homes, the report says.
The city’s projection suggests the region around Saskatoon will continue to grow at a faster pace than the city itself, in this case at an annual average rate of three per cent.
This rate suggests the region around the city would jump from 41,703 in 2015 to 53,383 in 2025 and to 68,335 in 2035.
“This is equivalent to adding approximately three communities the size of Warman or Martensville by 2035,” the report says.
It will be presented at Monday’s meeting of city council’s planning, development and community services committee.
If the city grows at two per cent and the surrounding region grows at three per cent, the combined Saskatoon region, known as the Saskatoon census metropolitan area, would balloon to 366,155 by 2025 and 448,985 by 2035.
Most of the growth anticipated in any of the scenarios is expected to come from people moving to the city.
Migration to Saskatoon is expected to account for about 69 to 74 per cent of the growth in the next two decades.
The remainder of the growth is calculated by subtracting the expected number of deaths from the anticipated number of births.
The 2012 population projection of 266,113 people by 2017 looks pretty accurate. The city’s latest population estimate, from Dec. 31, 2016, is 265,300 people.