A Tale of Two Cities

By Fred Morley

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Depends who you believe.

Last week was a busy week for those that rank the economic performance of cities.  First the CFIB "Communities in Boom": Canada’s Top Entrepreneurial Cities and now the Bruce Erskine article in Friday’s Herald citing the Canadian Bank  CIBC Metropolitan Economic Activity Index. 

First of all, it’s great that people are talking about cities and in particular Halifax.  Cities are important.  All of Nova Scotia’s net new growth in economic activity and population will come from Halifax and surrounding counties.   More and more, we are all recognizing this is not a bad thing or a good thing; it’s just the way things are.  It’s the way the world works now.  Last year, for the first time, the majority of the world’s population and its economic activity was in cities.  Canada’s population is already 80% urban.  Nova Scotia is entering that world. 

Back to the city rankings. Halifax has weathered the recession very well so far.  We have created more jobs in the last 12 months than any city in the country. 

More than Toronto. 

More than Olympics crazed Vancouver. 

More than the current hotbeds of Saskatoon, Regina and St. John’s. 

So when CFIB ranks Halifax 70th of 96 cities and towns I admit that I don’t get it.  In contrast, CIBC's survey of Canada’s 26 largest cities ranks us 5th in terms of economic vitality.  It begs the question - Halifax…do we have a problem or not?  Well, yes and no.  CFIB research is not entirely balanced and it comes from comparing cities that don’t have a lot in common.  Not quite comparing apples and oranges but more like comparing oranges and clementines.  After all, comparing number 3 ranked Joliette (pop 40,000) and number 90 ranked Toronto (pop 2.5 million) may mask a somewhat different scale of civic challenges in these two cities.  However it would be wrong to ignore concerns raised around ease of doing business.  In many respects, those of us in the bigger centres likely have something to learn from our smaller cousins.

From and economist’s perspective CIBC’s work is more relevant.  In this survey, Halifax does very well on employment creation..no surprise given our diverse economy.  More surprising is that almost 85% of our jobs are full time…indicating a break from the past.  Indeed, both Saint John and St. John’s proportion of full time work is over 80% as well and all three are in the top 6 cities in the country for full time workers.  So much for that myth of only seasonal part-time workers in Atlantic Canada.

The second interesting development is the recovery in population growth in Halifax.  Halifax has bounced back strongly from a pretty poor showing in the last census in 2006…a time when too many people we knew were heading west.  Well, now they’re heading back.

When we compare cities, it’s best to stick to hard measures.  Every meaningful measure of the Halifax economy points to a strong performance over the last year relative to other cities.  In a future that is about people and where they want to live, our appeal to young professionals as outlined in “Next Cities”  where we also ranked 5th, is a confidence boost.   However, smart cities don’t take anything for granted.  They don’t ignore problems they fix them. 

So, it isn’t the best of times, because the world is in recession and Halifax is part of that world.  But it isn’t the worst of times because Halifax is more than holding its own, leading the pack in employment growth and near the front in most meaningful economic indicators.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

English novelist (1812 - 1870)

Fred Morley is the Executive Vice President and Chief Economist (and aspiring English novelist) at the Greater Halifax Partnership.

Comments

[taufgeschenk]

It is good to see the stats about the cities and I am impressed the way Halifax is resisting against the economic crisis.