"Canada rules best cities list."

[Kibbo]

From the Globe and Mail

Canada rules best-cities list

By OLIVER MOORE
Globe and Mail Update

POSTED AT 12:52 PM EDT Tuesday, Aug 10, 2004


Canadian cities have taken the top four spots in a ranking of the best places in the world for expatriates to live.

The list ? which was created by combining rankings of cities' quality of life and cost of living ? was released Tuesday. It placed Canadian cities in five of the top six spots, the Australian city of Perth breaking the Canuck streak with a fifth-place showing.

The list comes from Research Worldwide, which calls itself ?The Worldwide Commercial Real Estate Information Portal.?

The methodology behind the list led to high rankings by cities that represent a compromise between quality of life and cost. Those that scored well had to show a sufficiently good quality of life, but could not be too expensive to live in.

Ottawa and Wellington, New Zealand's capital, were the only national capitals in the 20 spots on the list, which was generally made up of solidly second-tier cities.

?We computed a schedule of the 20 best cities, that is, ranking the difference where the quality of living is highest and the cost of living is lowest,? the company said. ?Corporate real estate players may find this worldwide comparison of interest.?

Canada's capital ranked first on the list, followed by Vancouver, Calgary and then Montreal. Toronto came sixth, barely half a point behind Perth on a 100-point scale.

None of the cities generally acknowledged to be the world's most interesting and exciting made the list. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo were nowhere to be found, a reflection of the much higher cost of living there compared with smaller cities.

The United States made the list only once, scoring 16th place with the tropical paradise of Honolulu. The majority of the other 19 cities were in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There was also a smattering of European entries, the bulk of them in Germany.

Research Worldwide's list was compiled by combining two studies completed earlier by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

Mercer's quality-of-life survey evaluated 39 criteria in more than 200 cities, including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services. Their cost-of-living survey was based on the consumer behaviour of expatriates living in a foreign city.

Each survey used New York as a baseline, giving that city 100 points and extrapolating all the other cities off it.

To create their own list, Research Worldwide subtracted each city's cost-of-living result from its quality-of-living score. Doing so gave Ottawa a table-leading score of 40.4 points, four points ahead of runnerup Vancouver.

 

[MegaWorks]

NICE! Montreal rules

 

[Kibbo]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
NICE! Montreal rules

Yes, it does. I had an opportunity to spend a part of my summer there. I'm kicking myself for not taking it (not because of this article.) Haven't been there in 8 years.

 

[sandorski]

Ottawa??!!! Never been there, but such a place, especially to this Westerner, couldn't possibly have any quality of Life!!!

 

[chrisms]

I visited Vancouver and was amazed. What a great place, especially the way the cops treat people like me.

 

[Kibbo]

Originally posted by: chrisms
I visited Vancouver and was amazed. What a great place, especially the way the cops treat people like me.

People like you? Are you a hippy? Or a Heroin addict?



sandorski,

The quality of life in Ottawa is so high because the porkbarrelers can tax the honest oil tycoons out west and give a bunch of sissy French civil servants inflated salaries. Then, they go to nice latte-serving cafes or too-expensive hockey arenas and form their socialist plots against you. Geeze, don't you read the papers?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Kibbo

Originally posted by: chrisms
I visited Vancouver and was amazed. What a great place, especially the way the cops treat people like me.

People like you? Are you a hippy? Or a Heroin addict?



sandorski,

The quality of life in Ottawa is so high because the porkbarrelers can tax the honest oil tycoons out west and give a bunch of sissy French civil servants inflated salaries. Then, they go to nice latte-serving cafes or too-expensive hockey arenas and form their socialist plots against you. Geeze, don't you read the papers?

Hehe, reminds me why I didn't renew my Subscription to BC Report(now called something else last I heard).

 

[HermDogg]

Best - Canada?

:music: One of these things is not like the other... :music:

 

[booger711]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
NICE! Montreal rules

cool place

 

[BDawg]

I guess the rankings don't factor in freezing your nuts off.

 

[Stunt]

Most people don't realize that southern ontario is in line with the top of california.
90% of canadians live along the 49th parallel, making our winters unnoticably worse than detroit, buffalo, or new york.

I do agree that Canada gets cold in the winter, but 8 months of the year it is comfortably cool and sometimes uncomforably hot in the summer. I actually think i'd take the winter over 6 months of digusting hot like pheonix...:s

 

[arsbanned]

90% of canadians live along the 49th parallel, making our winters unnoticably worse than detroit, buffalo, or new york.

Annnnnd this is a ...good thing? hahahaha.
Actually though, I am giving serious consideration to moving to Canada. I would still require at least a month in a warm clime though, say, in February.

I actually think i'd take the winter over 6 months of digusting hot like pheonix...:s

I agree with you there. You just run from air conditioner to air conditioner. At least in colder climes you can ski. Mmmm, British Columbia skiiiiiiing.....