Smart growth

Cox is vice-president of the CODATU Association, which seeks to improve urban transport in the developing world, and a member of the organization committee of the International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport. [...] The top population quintile of urban areas covers one-eighth of the land area of the lowest population quintile. [...] This reflects the international trend, and has been the source of a common criticism to the effect that suburbs have “drained the cities”. [...] By contrast, • the Toronto urban area, with approximately 20 percent of Canada’s urban population, covers only 6 percent of the nation’s urban land, and one-eighth of the land covered by the lowest pop- ulation quintile; • the Montreal and Vancouver urban areas represent the second-largest population quintile and more than 11 percent of Canada’s total urban land area, less than one-quarter of the [...] The Club withdrew the calculator after it was pointed out that the densities they seemed to be promoting were higher than those of Calcutta’s infamous “black hole”.17 Density is at the core of the issue.