In Quotes: 2014 Civic Census

The City released the 2014 Civic Census results yesterday. Mayor Naheed Nenshi announced Calgary had its biggest year of growth ever increasing by 38,508 residents to 1,195,194 total.

Here's a few of the things the mayor had to say about the census:

"Calgary experienced this year, its greatest single year of growth in population, as a matter of fact in my time in this job we have experienced three of our four largest years of population growth." "As you all know, the long term goal under the MDP (Municipal Development Plan) is to have half of development in existing parts of the city and half in new areas of the city. We are achieving that goal much, much faster than people thought we would. Last year it was 58 per cent in new communities, 42 per cent in developed communities, and as recently as, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but certainly in the last decade we were still looking at greater than 100 per cent of growth in new communities, so shifts are happening quickly. That said, the housing starts are still a bit lower than I would like to see."

"Certainly a low amount of housing starts combined with a high vacancy rate leads to problems in housing affordability. So what we've seen is the industry and the market responding very well to market shifts but we as a city need to do what we can do insure that people are able to get these projects on board quickly."