“…While growth in Wood Buffalo (Fort McMurray) is clearly driven by the oil boom, the same cannot be said for Abbotsford and Kelowna. Finally, the eastern Canadian urban system appears to be much more affected by the disequalizing forces affecting urban systems in other rich countries (Storper, 2010;Brunelle, 2012): compared to western Canada, there are much clearer winners and losers, and the gap is growing. While the West is split between regions characterized by petroleum-driven growth and regions characterized by more diverse growth patterns, the East is split between regions with moderate growth driven by services and manufacturing and stagnant regions with little or no growth in tradable industries.…”