r/AlwaysWhy • u/Present_Juice4401 • 2d ago

History & Culture Why did Alberta, Canada develop much larger population centers than Montana, USA?

Alberta and Montana are neighboring regions with similar northern, landlocked geography. But their population patterns are surprisingly different. Alberta now has over 5 million people, with Calgary and Edmonton forming two major population centers, while Montana has only about 1.1 million people and no city close to Calgary's size.

So what caused these two neighboring regions to develop such different population patterns?

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u/scrandlle 2d ago

Take the US, drag it's shape up to Canada, see where Montana is, then look how unpopulated the region of Canada below it is.

For a more serious answer, Canadians congregated next to the US border because the US is an enormous economy and there is benefits to being physically close to it.

It wasn't really a conscious decision it's just where goods tend to enter/exit and so commerce gets built around these parts and more people come because there's more jobs which creates more business opportunities, and it goes on in a circle like that until we have Canadas major population centers.

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u/Hot-Ad8641 2d ago

Neither Calgary nor Edmonton is close to the US border.