The Greater Metropolitan Area
Ottawa is the central city of a much larger metropolitan area, the fourth largest in Canada. The interdependence of Ottawa and its neighbouring municipalities is growing stronger. The people who live and work in this greater area reside, shop, go to school and travel to and from 33 municipalities spread across nine counties and regions surrounding Ottawa and Gatineau.
At the end of 2005 the population of the greater Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area was just over 1.3 million. Of this total, two-thirds live in the City of Ottawa, 19% in the Ville de Gatineau, 11% in Ontario Municipalities Adjacent to Ottawa (OMATO) and 4% in Québec Municipalities Adjacent to Gatineau (QMAG).
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The interdependence of central cities with outlying areas can be measured in many ways. The most obvious is employment. Over time, the rural areas close to the urban core have become extensions of the metropolitan commutershed, especially when road access is upgraded to four-lane divided freeways. The cost of housing in the urban core and other factors has prompted some households to move farther away and commute back to the city to work.
| Area | Population (est. 2005 year-end) |
Share of metro population (%) |
|---|---|---|
City of Ottawa |
865,553 |
66.5% |
City of Gatineau |
245,629 |
18.9% |
OMATO1 |
143,116 |
11.0% |
QMAG2 |
47,757 |
3.7% |
TOTAL |
1,302,055 |
100% |
|
(1) OMATO: Ontario Municipalities Adjacent to Ottawa (2) QMAG: Québec Municipalities Adjacent to Gatineau |
In the surrounding municipalities that are included as part of the greater metro area, between one-quarter and three-quarters of the employed labour force commutes to Ottawa and Gatineau to work.
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There are about 85,000 people from the surrounding municipalities whose place of work is in Ottawa. The City estimates that about 85-90% of those commute every day. Reverse commutes also take place. On a daily basis, almost 20,000 residents of Ottawa commute to a job in surrounding municipalities, including Gatineau. This data, which is taken from the 2001 Census, suggests that the daytime population of Ottawa swells by about 55,000 people who come to work.
Of the Ottawa residents who work outside the city, the overwhelming majority (82%) work in Gatineau. The next commuting destinations are Lanark County (5%), Prescott-Russell (4%) and Leeds and Grenville (4%). Renfrew (3%) and S.D.&G. (2%) follow in the ranking. Very small numbers of Ottawa residents work in the Quebec-side MRC’s surrounding Gatineau.
Most of these commutes take place by private automobile. However, over the years, several transit companies have started operating commuter lines into Ottawa from many of the surrounding municipalities. In addition to OC Transpo and the Société de Transport de l’Outaouais (STO), eight transit companies operate on the Ontario side of the greater metro area.
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These eight systems operate eighteen lines that are integrated into the OC Transpo bus route numbering system and most of them operate on the OC Transpo Transitway.
Moving in, moving out
The movement of people between Ottawa and the surrounding communities is significant. Between 2000 and 2005, 39,425 people moved into Ottawa from Gatineau and the nine surrounding counties and MRC’s. In that same period, 51,840 people moved from Ottawa to Gatineau and the nine surrounding regions.
The net out-flow of residents from Ottawa to the adjacent communities is due to a combination of factors, the most important being housing costs and highway access. The in-flow of residents, on the other hand, is likely due to people’s wish to reduce commute times to work and to reside closer to urban amenities.
Gatineau has been the main beneficiary of population from Ottawa, with a net movement of 3,195 Ottawans crossing the river between 2000 and 2005. The next most popular destination for resettling Ottawans was Lanark County (3,000), and the upcoming twinning of Highway 7 into a four-lane divided highway will probably accelerate this out-flow. In third place, helped by the opening of Highway 416, is Leeds & Grenville (2,221), and in fourth place is Prescott-Russell (1,997). Les-Collines-de-l’Outaouais rounds out fifth place with 762 net new Ottawans making their home north of Gatineau.
The city of Gatineau is also experiencing out-migration to all but one of the surrounding regions. Between 2000 and 2005, Gatineau has gained population only from Ottawa and very small numbers from Pontiac, but has lost residents mostly to Les-Collines-de-l’Outaouais but also to Prescott-Russell, MRC Papineau and MRC La-Vallée-de-la-Gatineau. The extension of Autoroute 50 into Papineau is opening a new commutershed east of Gatineau.
Prescott-Russell is gaining residents from Ottawa and from Gatineau, but losing small numbers to Leeds & Grenville and S.D.&G.
Leeds & Grenville, helped by the opening of Highway 416, is gaining residents from eight of the nine regions surrounding Ottawa and Gatineau. Most of the gains are from Lanark and S.D.&G., as well as Ottawa.
Lanark is also gaining residents, mostly from Ottawa but also from Gatineau and seven of the nine surrounding regions, especially from Prescott-Russell and S.D.&G.
Renfrew is gaining from Ottawa, thanks to the recent completion of Highway 417 to Arnprior. It is also gaining from Gatineau and six of the nine surrounding regions, notably from the MRC Pontiac.
La-Vallée-de-la-Gatineau is gaining small numbers of new residents from Gatineau, Ottawa and five of the nine surrounding regions, notably Les-Collines-de-l’Outaouais. It represents, effectively, Gatineau’s next ex-urban belt beyond Les-Collines. Autoroute 5 is one of the factors assisting the growth of municipalities in this area. The recent announcement of the extension of Autoroute 5 to Wakefield will strengthen the integration of this area into the metropolitan commutershed.
Similarly, the MRC Papineau, with the help of the new Autoroute 50 extension, is gaining from Les-Collines and Gatineau, from Ottawa, and from another three of the nine surrounding regions.
Population Growth
The Ontario municipalities around Ottawa and the Québec municipalities around Gatineau have grown at faster rates than both central cities since 2001. As of the end of 2005, the population of the Ontario municipalities around Ottawa is estimated at just over 143,000, the equivalent of Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven combined. While the city of Ottawa’s population grew by 7.3% between 2001 and 2005, the population of the municipalities around Gatineau grew by 10.3% and the population of those around Ottawa by 9.4%.
The fastest growing municipalities appear to be those that have direct access to a major highway into Ottawa or Gatineau and sufficient capacity in their municipal infrastructure to accommodate growth. According to the City of Ottawa’s population estimates, the fastest growing municipalities since 2001 have been Clarence-Rockland, Les-Collines-de-l’Outaouais, Russell, Beckwith and Montague, all of which posted growth rates above 10% since 2001. Another nine municipalities grew at higher rates than Ottawa or Gatineau.
Share of the metro population
Despite fast growth in the surrounding municipalities, Ottawa has managed to keep a relatively constant share of the greater metro area’s population. Even though Ottawa’s growth rate is below those of the faster-growing municipalities surrounding the city, our larger population means we are adding a larger number of people even if our growth rate is lower than those of the smaller outlying communities.
Overall, this means that while the outlying municipalities are growing in large part on the strength of Ottawa’s job market, Ottawa remains the focus of metro population growth and is experiencing only a very small proportional decline in its share of metro population. Ottawa accounted for 67.1% of metro population in 1991. This share dipped to 66.2% in 1996, rebounded to 67.5% in 2001 and is estimated at 66.5% as of the end of 2005.
Unique geography
Like all large North American cities, the commutershed around Ottawa has grown larger over the years. Road widenings and housing costs continue to contribute to this ex-urban growth. However, Ottawa presents a unique situation in that there are vast rural areas within city limits between the city’s suburbs and the outer areas of ex-urban growth. The city’s suburbs are not themselves contiguous with the city core due to the presence of the Greenbelt.
In contrast, other large cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have a continuous fabric starting at the core, passing through mature and newer suburbs and reaching into the ex-urban hinterlands. In Toronto’s case, only the Oak Ridges Moraine introduces a natural break in the suburban footprint, albeit at a large distance from the core, leaving a large suburban fabric contiguous to the city’s older central section. In Montreal’s case, the St. Lawrence River separates the core from the first belt of mature suburbs and the suburban fabric continues uninterrupted beyond the bridges. In Vancouver’s case, the city is constrained by the sea, the mountains and precious agricultural lands, but its urbanization has created a continuous corridor between downtown and Abbotsford.
Ottawa’s geography has the exceptional effect of adding to the distance needed to cover the commute to residential communities located farther afield and, to a certain extent, this may be contributing to Ottawa’s share of the metro population staying as stable as it has been over the past two decades.
On the other hand, our commutershed is spread out over a much larger area, resulting in traffic driving through long stretches of rural areas, and this results in higher fuel use and air pollution. The advantages of contiguousness are diluted by the distances, but the effects of spread-out development remain the same.
IN OUR NEXT ISSUE:
Tracking Ottawa’s Population Projections, 2001-2006
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