Canada’s major cities typically score highly in “best city” rankings. Vancouver is frequently named among the principais cidades do mundo para se viver, e Toronto also ranks high on many “best of” scales.

Mas a recente Scorecard em Prosperidade relatório, compiled by the Toronto Board of Trade (the city’s chamber of commerce), reached a different conclusion: com base no competitividade económica as well as overall quality of life, o “melhor cidade do planeta” é…Calgary.

Por Calgary? The report noted that:

Calgary’s blistering economy over the past five years may have powered it to the top, mas its overall favourable environment provides a solid basis for attracting and keeping people. No domínio de Economia sozinho, Calgary ganha sete classes "A", coming in as the top performer in five indicators: employment growth, crescimento da renda, unemployment rate, non-residential building permit growth e índice total de impostos (TTI). On measures of Labour Attractiveness, Calgary força vem de sua low incidence of low-income population, low homicide rate e, somewhat surprisingly, its relative housing affordability.

Ranking logo atrás Calgary eram Dallas e Hong Kong, em #2 e #3, respectivamente. Fourth-place was a four-way tie between Toronto, Boston, Londres, e Nova York. Resumindo o topo 10 eram Vancouver e Seattle (amarrado para #8) e Quebec City em #10.

No entanto, the data for this report was compiled when the economy was still flying high, leading the authors to conclude that “Calgary’s continued domination is currently under threat, as weaker energy prices and tighter credit conditions have slowed oil and gas activity in the province of Alberta.”

A full report is available as a PDF file or in an abbreviated online presentation version.

Fotografia © Carolyn B. Heller