One final bummer: Edmonton bumps Vancouver over quality-of-life rating
From the BuzzBuzzHome blog:
Agree with Mercer that Vancouver has the highest quality of life in North America? Because that distinction is being challenged by another Quality of Life Index from Numbeo, who gave the honour to Edmonton.
In fact, Alberta’s capital was deemed to have the third highest quality of life in the entire world, behind only Berlin and Zurich.
The second highest ranked Canadian city was another Albertan town: Calgary, which landed in the fifth spot worldwide (Montreal ranked ninth, Toronto came in at number 11 and Vancouver is 16). …
Numbeo’s quality of life index considers eight categories, including a city’s purchasing power, house price to income ratio, safety and traffic commute times.
Numbeo.com is a database of user-contributed information and manually collected data from official sources for cities and countries’ living conditions, including cost of living, housing, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.
This list must have ignored weather? I lit up the BBQ yesterday Temp was 7C. Edmonton was -13 C
All time low in Edmonton about -40 C or F Vancouver? about 0 F
Edmonton, the most livible city in Canada? It must be true “Numbeo uses heuristic techonology”. Apples to Apples. Easy to compare the price of apples without ever setting foot in Edmonton.
-47 Windchill in an Edmonton winter, or +47 Humidex in a Montreal summer. I’ll take Vancouver, where the barometer is stuck on changeable and the weather rarely changes.
While not useless these surveys are flawed because what I value for quality of life may be significantly different than the next person. Personally I would take Vancouver over Edmonton but know several people who have moved there and would not come back.
“Interesting” measurements. Both high housing prices and congestion are strong signs that people want to live in a city which likely means they enjoy the quality of life there. That said, the lack of congestion (if that is the case) is likely due to high levels of transit use.
Instead of all these weird and wonderful measures weighted by some magic formula, why don’t they just poll people.
I’m bemused when a North American city gets on these lists as we tend to lack some pretty basic quality of life elements as compared with Europeans (e.g. being able to legally imbibe on a beach, functional transit networks, and different philosophies toward work and vacation). To think that Edmonton, or Vancouver, or New York are even in the Top 10 globally is pretty silly.
It all depends on who you are and what you do as well as what you like. I know lots of Europeans who would love to live in Vancouver (and lots that do and would not go home). I also know lots of people who would love the reverse.
You’re right, of course. Tastes vary.
I wonder whether absolute house price, or house price relative to income, are important metrics in Mercer’s survey, or even considered. The purpose of Mercer’s ratings, I believe, is to help when advising corporations on locating employees in new cities around the world.
I doubt that house ptrice is so important in that decision. If the house price is higher, then the company may have to pay employees more in order to entice them to move there, but other issues, such as crime rates, climate, educational and cultural opportunities, may be more important factors.