Calgary ranked 5th best city in North America for quality of living

Mar 13 2019, 11:37 pm

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In case you needed any more convincing that Calgary is a pretty great place to call home, our city has just been ranked the fifth best city in North America when it comes to quality of living.

The latest ranking comes courtesy of the annual Mercer survey, which includes 231 cities around the world. Mercer is one of the world’s largest human resource firms.

On the global scale, Calgary cracked the top-40, taking the 32nd spot — a one-point gain over 2018’s list.

World rankings

European cities dominated the quality of life rankings in this year’s survey, making up eight of the top 10 best cities to live in the world.

And we shouldn’t feel too bad about not cracking the top-10 list. Only one Canadian city managed to do that: Vancouver, British Columbia.

On the global scale, it was Vienna, Austria, that topped the list for the 10th year in a row.

Top 10 cities in North America for quality of living

  1. Vancouver, Canada
  2. Toronto, Canada
  3. Ottawa, Canada
  4. Montreal, Canada
  5. Calgary, Canada
  6. San Francisco, USA
  7. Boston, USA
  8. Honolulu, USA
  9. New York, USA
  10. Seattle, USA

Given that Calgary was below San Francisco in the 2018 ranking, either we must be doing something right or they’re doing something wrong (or both).

YYC fell in line with Canberra, Australia (30th overall), Helsinki, Finland (31st), Dublin, Ireland (33rd), and San Francisco, USA (34th).

Mercer ranks quality of living based on the following criteria:

  • Political and social environment
  • Economic environment
  • Socio-cultural environment
  • Medical and health considerations
  • Schools and education
  • Public services and transportation
  • Recreation
  • Consumer goods
  • Housing
  • Natural environment

Keep it up, YYC!

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