GROWTH EXPLOSION IN THE SUBURBS
Despite the attention it gets, Hamilton’s lower city is actually shrinking while the suburbs are taking off
THERE’S A GROWING DIVIDE between the former City of Hamilton and its five suburban communities.
Over the past decade, the amalgamated city’s population grew by more than 32,000 people.
About 31,000 of those — or 96 per cent of the growth — was located in Stoney Creek, Glanbrook, Dundas, Ancaster and Flamborough, while the population of the former City of Hamilton remained almost the same.
In fact, despite attracting plenty of developmentrelated — and media — attention over the past 10 years, the lower former City of Hamilton actually saw its population drop by 4,500 between 2006 and 2016, a decline of 2.5 per cent.
Glanbrook, by contrast, nearly doubled to almost 30,000 people while Ancaster and Stoney Creek added more than 7,000 people each over the past decade.
If the population trends stay constant, it means the five suburban communities and the former City of Hamilton could reach parity in population in the next 35 to 40 years. That would affect everything from transportation to school locations to the distribution of political representatives on city council.
“DESPITE (ONTARIO’S)
Places to Grow Act and the greenbelt legislation, we continue to have high rates of growth in the suburbs,” said Sara Mayo, a social planner with the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton. “That to me is where the failure is occurring.”
“At a certain point we will be hitting the end of greenfields in Hamilton, as they have in other cities,” Mayo added. “As long as the city keeps its urban boundary firm, as it’s said it will, there will be a time when they can no longer expand outwards but will have to expand inwards and upwards.”
Both Mayo and Judy Lam, the city’s manager of urban renewal, say there are many reasons why population is dropping in the lower city: smaller families, multi-unit houses converted back to single-family homes, and vacant properties.
With interest in Hamilton real estate growing, Lam said absentee landlords are finding “it’s not worthwhile for them to just sit vacant.”
“I’m hoping that in that whole lower city — and that includes all the east end, where I see a lot of projects, or Barton which is starting to improve — that we should hopefully see an increase in the number of units that people can rent,” said Lam.
Mayo believes unoccupied units in the lower city are also a culprit — social housing units in need of repairs, private-sector units being renovated, and units being kept empty as owners hope for higher rents.
“There are more unoccupied units than there were in the previous census and we’re seeing this in other cities as well,” Mayo added.
Lam is confident there will be a noticeable shift in population distribution when the next census takes place in 2021.
“I think you will see a big influx of population especially in the downtown,” said Lam. “There are so many projects on the go that we’re bound to see the numbers go up quite a bit.”
That could be true, but there’s one major planned development that could dramatically accelerate population growth near the city’s perimeter.
The city has proposed a massive new community for Elfrida, once a dot on the map near the intersection of Rymal Road East and Upper Centennial Parkway.
The development would add up to 80,000 people and jobs to the area in the next quarter of a century. That’s like adding the population of Peterborough to the city.
“If that happens, that would be a huge change to the way our city grows,” said Mayo.
The project would stretch across Stoney Creek and Glanbrook, and that could also be pivotal in a city where people still cling to earlier municipal identities.
“As growth happens across these old boundaries, people may not identify as much with former municipalities the way they used to,” Mayo added.