London's ward boundaries aren't keeping up with population growth. Here's what could change

London's recent and rapid growth has left its 14 municipal wards rather lop-sided when it comes to population, a situation city councillors will try to rectify as they consider four proposals to redraw the ward boundaries. 

The ward boundary review process began earlier this year and on Tuesday, consultants from Watson & Associates will present four options to councillors at the strategic priorities and policy committee. 

Their challenge is to come up with a plan that more evenly spread out the population among London's 14 wards. Each ward is represented by one councillor with the mayor elected at large. But those wards have wide disparities of population, a situation that prompted the review.  

For example, Ward 7 in the city's northwest has 22,000 more residents than does Ward 2, in the city's east end.

Martin Horak, an associate professor of political science at Western University, said that kind of imbalance isn't ideal for democracy.

"Right now, Ward 7 has almost twice as many people as Ward 2, so it means effectively that the voices of people in Ward 2 count almost twice as much around the council horseshoe," he said, referring to the way chairs are arranged in council chambers.

"We need to balance out that population so the people are equally represented." 

The consultant's report says based on 2025 population estimates, four of the 14 wards have populations that are either 15 per cent below or above the "optimal average size."

However with future growth, the number of out-of-whack wards will grow to seven by 2030 with only five of the 14 wards inside that optimal balance range by 2035. 

London has been one of Canada's fastest growing cities in recent years, adding some 38,500 people between 2016 and 2021 and the growth isn't expected to slow down. The city's growth forecast is projecting London to grow to almost 537,000 by 2030 and to 572,000 by 2035. 

The challenge is, that growth won't happen evenly across the city. 

"That growth is going to tend accentuate the unevenness," said Horak. "So we kind of have to get a jump on it as a city and adjust the ward boundaries so there's a more level playing field." 

Watson & Associates put together four proposals to redraw the boundaries. Adjusting the overall number of councillors up or down wasn't among the options. The report says based on feedback "15 members [including the mayor] is the preferred size for London's council" and that London's council size is in line with other similarly sized municipalities. 

The four preliminary boundary redrawing options, which you can see here in an interactive map overlay, each represent a mix of different priorities. Some options strive to keep neighbourhoods together in the same ward at the expense of population balance; others put more of a priority on balancing the population numbers. 

No easy way to redraw wards

As the largest ward by population, Corrine Rahman's Ward 7 is due for a downsizing, but she doesn't want the redrawn ward to only include new subdivisions. 

"It would be more challenging from an advocacy perspective to get folks that are newer to the city ... involved in conversations around where services and amenities are needed," she said. 

Rahman also said the process can leave voters confused, given that provincial and federal boundaries are also slated to change. That could be a barrier to getting people involved in local elections.

"We want to make sure that as many people as possible go out and vote," she said. 

In some of the proposals, the ward numbers change drastically. For example, the fourth option has Ward 2 moving from the east side of the city to the west. The same proposal would move Ward 4 from downtown to the north end of the city. 

Do ward numbers matter?

The shifting of ward numbers would mean councillors seeking reelection would have to run under new ward numbers if they wanted to continue representing the same area. In other cases where wards are split in half, incumbents would need to choose where to run, possibly leaving out residents they've represented before.  

Coun. Jerry Pribil currently represents Ward 5 at the north end of the city between Richmond and Adelaide. He's not so concerned about the ward numbers. 

"This exercise is not about the 14 of us and the mayor," he said. "This is about half a million Londoners and that's the priority. We have to make the best decision for all of London."

Councillors will hear from the public at Tuesday's meeting and are expected to make a final decision on boundary re-drawing by winter.