April 30, 2010

• Ottawa-Gatineau most livable community in Canada, says MoneySense magazine

  Thu Apr 29, 6:01 PM

  By The Canadian Press

  TORONTO - Ottawa and nearby Gatineau, Que. are Canada's most livable community, says a report by MoneySense magazine.

  The Toronto-based personal finance publication says its study of 179 Canadian cities of more than 10,000 people ranks the country's capital and its nearby suburb top on the list for livability.

  The study in the magazine's latest issue, available this week, looked at everything from a city's prosperity, affordability, weather and lifestyles in assessing the rankings.

  That means household incomes, housing prices, jobs and local health and social services factored into the evaluation, Sarah Efron, the magazine's managing editor, said in an interview Thursday.

  “The idea is not to look at things a tourist would look at such as how pretty the city is,” said Efron.

  “The idea is to look at things that impact livability, things like weather and housing prices, jobs, income and health care — those sort of measures.”

  Following Ottawa-Gatineau on the list were the Ontario cities of Kingston and Burlington and New Brunswick communities of Fredericton and Moncton.

  Rounding out the Top 10 were Repentigny, a community north of Montreal, Brandon, Man., Victoria, Winnipeg and Levis, Que., a city across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City.

  Victoria, last year's No. 1 most livable city, fell to eighth this year, mainly because of skyrocketing housing prices in the B.C. capital.

  Calgary ranked 27th, Vancouver 29th, Toronto 85th and Montreal 120th, said the magazine, published by Rogers Media.

  Housing prices were a key factor to livability as well as diversified economies with government, military or other public sector employment that helped offset the impact of last year's recession, said Efron.

  “Basically we found that in general, cities that were somewhat recession proof did well this year.”

  Efron said Canada's biggest cities — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — were far down the list because of the high cost of housing in those communities.

  “What you see is that the cities you think of as the big, exciting cool cities — (are further down the list) when you really look across the board at livability. Toronto, Vancouver are great places to live but you do sacrifice something by living there, which is this overall across the board dollars-and-cents evaluation of things.”

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  Read the article here

  The determining factors of a good city are different for everyone.  We all know Vancouver has been voted to be the best city to live in numerous global magazines including Economist, 2010.  Ottawa can be the best Canadian city to live in in the Money Sense magazine b/c it makes money sense (eg. with 2M = isolated mansion in Ottawa, but a humble home in Vancouver).  It CAN be an awesome city for people with the right mindset to settle down April through October.  I still prefer first or second tier anglo or sino-cities at this moment, and drive to the mountains for the snow.  My hometowns are Hong Kong and Vancouver, and I used to find Vancouver too small.

  • 2:42 pm
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