Province
Vancouver ranked third in a global survey ranking overall quality of life, narrowly losing out to Swiss cities Zurich and Geneva, says a new global survey published today.
Other Canadian cities included in the survey were Toronto at 15th, Ottawa at 18th, Montreal at 22nd and Calgary at 24th.
Mercer Human Resource Consulting gave Vancouver a score of 107.7 in its annual ranking of quality of life, tied with Vienna for third place and behind Zurich with 108.1 and Geneva at 108.
Danielle Bushen, a principal at Mercer in Toronto, said Vancouver had high scores across the board, but its weak spot was crime.
“Crime rates in North America tend to be slightly higher than in Europe in general and this holds true when you compare locations like Zurich and Geneva to Vancouver,” Bushen said.
The survey ranked 215 cities around the world based on 39 quality of life determinants including social, economic, environmental and personal safety factors.
Cities were ranked against New York as the base city which was given a base score of 100. The five Canadian cities included in the survey all ranked higher than any of the U.S. cities surveyed.
Bushen said the frigid Canadian winters do count against places like Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, but for the most part they are stable and safe places to live.
“All of those things that could cause real differences in quality of life, and really create significant limitations on a person’s quality of life, just aren’t an issue. So we rate very highly,” she said.
Honolulu was the highest ranked U.S. city at 27th.
Baghdad was ranked the world’s least enticing city with a score of 14.5.
Other low-scoring cities included Brazzaville in Congo (29.5), Bangui in the Central African Republic (30.6) and Khartoum in Sudan (31).
All the Canadian cities in the survey also appeared in the top-25 ranking for health and sanitation with Calgary ranking as the top city in the world followed by Ottawa in fourth, Montreal and Vancouver tied for 10th and Tor-onto ranked 21st.
© The Vancouver Province 2007
