Best Place to live.....

Best Place to live.....

In a world as large and diverse, it’s only natural for comparisons to be drawn between countries. Which is more liveable, New Zealand or Canada? Is Australia better than Switzerland for raising a family? Which countries are best for retirees?

This is what drives at MoneySense magazine to publish Best Places to Live. They look at empirical, objective criteria such as housing affordability, incomes, job prospects, crime rates and access to health care. Even weather is taken into account. Information is taken from the Census Metropolitan Areas, Census Agglomeration and Statistics.

MoneySense magazine include every community with a population of more than 10,000 people, 180 cities and towns in all. Each one is ranked in more than 20 different categories for a final figure out of a possible 105 points. The scores were close and no city is perfect. Only two scored higher than 70, and just barely.

The magazine doesn’t expect everyone to agree with their findings. What makes a city appealing for one person may make it unliveable for another. They were often asked, “what about the scenery, or the community spirit?” The fact is there are plenty of subjective, intangible criteria that we intentionally leave out of our formulas for the simple reason that they cannot possibly be measured.

For the second year in a row, Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada takes the top spot in their rankings. What does it have that other cities don’t? In a word, consistency. It does not rank particularly high in any individual category but it comes in above average across the board. It has jobs, accessible doctors, low crime, and household incomes and real estate are not drastically misaligned. There is a wealth of museums and galleries keep the culture-lover occupied, and the hostile winters are balanced out by beautiful summers.