Moneysense magazine has ranked Canadian municipalities with populations over 10,000 according to its criteria for making a community a great place to live. Ranking 37 out of 190 is interesting but we need to look at what those indicators are and how the scoring works to understand what it means. The link to find out how system worked can be found at the end of this article.
How can we account for Halton Hills being 37th whereas Vancouver is ranked 56?
The 190 municipalities were ranked on the following criteria: Walking/Biking to Work, Affordable Housing, Household Income, Discretionary Income, New Cars, Population Growth, Low Crime, Doctors per 1,000, Weather, Jobless Rate and Culture.
Ottawa came out as number 1 for the 3rd year in a row. Congratulations to Burlington for being number 2.
You might expect that these communities would be near the top in all of the rankings but in fact they are moderate for the most part and great in one or two categories. In the case of Burlington what really helped was that their Crime Rate was ranked number 3 and the weather was number 1. The Crime Rate is a Halton Regional number so Halton Hills shared the 3rd place ranking with Burlington, Oakville and Milton.
Vancouver was 190th, or worst for Affordable Housing but they were number 1 for Culture.
We all have different reasons for choosing where we live. Our own survey showed that Halton Hills residents value our small town feel above all else. The Moneysense survey didn't ask people why they chose to live where they did but rather tried to identify what those reasons might be.
Interestingly, some of the things not measured were Taxes, Population Density, Condition of Roads, Parks and Recreation Opportunities, Transportation System or Diversity.
I wonder what you would put for your criteria to determine the best place the live? Would you weight them all equally?
http://list.moneysense.ca/rankings/best-places-to-live/2012/Default.aspx?sp2=4&sc1=0&d1=a
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