Comparing the large variations in land use composition for the selected CTs highlights these issues.
Table 3.2 indicates that the size of CTs varies by about a factor of 25, from the 32-hectare
Hamilton tract to the almost 800-hectare Markham tract. Generally, the older downtowns of
Guelph, Hamilton, Kitchener, and Waterloo are smaller, while the newer centres of Markham,
Mississauga, and Scarborough tend to be very large. Although Statistics Canada ostensibly
uses population to define CT size, there is no clear pattern evident in this sample of CTs, where
populations also vary widely and some very large tracts also have large populations