Greater Toronto Area

The Greater Toronto Area (widely abbreviated as the GTA) is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. The GTA has a population of over 5.9 million people (July 1, 2006). The Greater Toronto Area is the 7th largest metropolitan area in North America. In addition to the City of Toronto, it includes the Regional Municipalities of York, Halton, Peel and Durham. The term GTA only came into usage in the mid-1990s after it was used in a widely discussed report on municipal governance restructuring in the region.

The Greater Toronto Area is one of North America's fastest-growing urban areas. As an economic area, the GTA consists of 25 municipalities and four regions in a total approximate area of over 7,100 km². Vast parts of the GTA remain farmland and forests including protected sections of the Oak Ridges Moraine, Rouge Park and the Niagara Escarpment. All of these areas are protected by the Greenbelt Nevertheless, low density suburban developments continue to be built, some on or near ecologically sensitive and protected areas. The government of Ontario has recently attempted to address this issue through the "Places to Grow" proposal which emphasizes higher-density growth in existing urban centres over the next 25 years.

The work force is approximately 2.9 million people, more than 100,000 companies and a $360 billion CAD gross domestic product, the GTA is Canada's undisputed business and manufacturing capital. The GTA is home to a number of post-secondary educational institutions, including 4 universities and 7 colleges.

Some municipalities that are considered part of the GTA are not within the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) (population est. 5,304,100 in 2005), example Oshawa, which is the centre of its own CMA or Burlington, which is included in the Hamilton CMA. Other municipalities, such as New Tecumseth in southern Simcoe County and Mono Township in Dufferin County are inlcuded in the Toronto CMA but not in the GTA. These different border configurations result in the GTA's population being higher than the Toronto CMA by almost one-half million people, often leading to confusion amongst people when trying to sort out the urban population of Toronto.

Other nearby urban areas, such as Hamilton, Barrie, St. Catharines-Niagara or Kitchener-Waterloo are not part of the GTA or the Toronto CMA, but form their own CMA's (Census Metropolitan Area) that are in fairly close proximity to the GTA (within one half-hour drive). Ultimately, all the aforementioned places are part of the Golden Horseshoe metropolitan region, which is an urban agglomeration.

The following regional governments are included in describing the Greater Toronto Area:

Regional Municipality of Durham, Regional Municipality of Halton, Regional Municipality of Peel, Regional Municipality of York. The City of Toronto is now a single-tier municipality, but before 1998 it had a similar "regional" structure under the name Metropolitan Toronto.

The City of Hamilton, Regional Municipality of Niagara and City of Guelph all have significant ties to Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area. Nonetheless, they are geographically distant enough not to be considered part of the GTA, officially or otherwise. It is expected that with current rate of regional growth these areas will one day in the future become part of the Greater Toronto Area. In some cases the provincial government already includes Hamilton and Niagara as part of the GTA for record keeping purposes as well as for transportation planning.

  In 2001, Statistics Canada identified four major urban regions exhibiting a cluster pattern of concentrated population growth. Among these regions, the Extended Golden Horseshoe Census Region includes all of the Greater Toronto Area listed above, as well as Niagara, Hamilton, Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. Combined, the Extended Golden Horseshoe has a population of more than 6.7 million people, now estimated at 7.8 million, containing approximately 25% of Canada's population.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia