Vancouver and another B.C. city recently ranked on a list of cities called the “Happy City Index.”
Last month, the first edition of the index was published — a “community-driven research effort” to create an index by an international team of researchers, analysts, and collaborators.
Not only did Vancouver crack the list, but it was in the top 50 — meaning that it is designated as a “gold city.”
Vancouver came in 39th, collecting 6,426 points. The city that received the highest number of points was Copenhagen, Denmark, with 6,954. The lowest-ranking city was Guadalajara, Mexico, with 4,719 points.
Burnaby was another B.C. city that made the list, coming in 134th place. Other Canadian cities on the list included Calgary, Quebec City, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. In total, the Happy City Index has 251 cities from countries around the world.
The Happy City Index recruited researchers from across the world to contribute to the collection and verification of city-level data, scoring cities on a set of 64 indicators grouped into six themes: citizens, governance, environment, economy, health, and mobility.
The indicators were also divided into four principal types, with each weighted differently so that the index “remains both evidence-based and proportionate.”
“Some indicators measure the direct situation of a city, some reflect national regulatory or socio-economic conditions that shape everyday life regardless of the specific city, and some describe wider country-level background conditions which are important in interpretation but should not be allowed to dominate the assessment of an individual urban area,” said the Happy City Index.
For example, one of the four types is called “Country-Level Indicators Describing National Context.”
While the Happy City Index said that this is important for understanding the context in which cities operate, the indicators in this type shouldn’t be weighted too heavily when judging the city, since these things aren’t “meaningfully controlled at the municipal level.”
It included obscure things like “urban innovation ecosystem potential” to indicate the wider national environment for innovation and “use of electronic banking services” to indicate financial modernization and digital inclusion.
For a city to earn a “gold” distinction like Vancouver, the Happy City Index said that they “demonstrate a consistently strong level of achievement across all six dimensions of the index, combining governance, quality of life, sustainability and long-term development strategies.”
“The broader purpose of the gold group is to promote the cities, policies and solutions that achieve truly remarkable results,” it added.
Vancouver also recently ranked 11th in a list of the world’s most livable cities for expats, and number 37 in a list of the 50 best cities in the world.
You can see the full list of how Vancouver compares to the overall Happy City Index average online.