best cities

MoneySense Top 10 Best Places to Live in Canada in 2013

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:09:50 -0400

Here we go again! Another ranking of the “best” places to live. I wonder how many of those there are. They just pop up on your computer screen like unwanted ads. Perhaps there are so many “best” cities rankings that at some point most cities end up winning or being in the top 10. Mayors and chambers of commerce know it, just like car companies. If you don’t win the top prize you will simply pick a category and exploit it to death to sell your product. It could be safety, trunk size, fuel efficiency, resale value. In the case of cities, it can be average house price, commuting time, unemployment rate, safety and the pièce de resistance, the vaguest criteria of all, the one that makes rankings such subjective tool: amenities.

What does it mean for MoneySense to be the best? A look at the methodology shows that the criteria are quite typical of most rankings: crime, amenities, commuting, heath, housing etc. Also, the number of points given to each criterion varies from one to another and are totally based on the mood of those who design the ranking. If you think that dry weather is important then you will give it more points. If you dislike bike paths you give it less point. If professional sport teams seem unimportant, you simply don’t use it as a criterion.

One big mistake that those guys do is to mess up distinctions between metropolitan areas and suburbs. Too often, they only include the boundaries of municipalities and break up larger cities into pieces even though they are really parts of greater metropolitan areas. For example, The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has close to 6 million residents. The Municipality (or City) of Toronto has about 2.5 million people. Mississauga, a populous suburb of the GTA, but has its own place in the very same ranking. How can this be? This is major flaw, a very common one.

So let’s take look at the ranking. We indicate when a city was part of a Census Metropolitan area):

Calgary, Alberta
St. Albert, Alberta ( a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Area of Edmonton)
Burlington, Ontario (a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Are of Toronto)
Strathcona County, Alberta ( a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Area of Edmonton)
Oakville, Ontario (a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Are of Toronto)
Ottawa, Ontario (Since all suburbs of Ottawa has been amalgamated it couldn’t be broken down like Edmonton or Toronto)
Saanich, British Columbia ( a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Area of Victoria)
Lacombe, Alberta ( a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Area of Edmonton)
Lethbridge, Alberta
Newmarket, Ontario (a suburb of the Census Metropolitan Are of Toronto)

It would be hard to end up with a more flawed ranking. There is a mix of small cities (Lethbridge), the mid-size city of Ottawa, with suburbs that have been amalgamated into one unified City of Ottawa, without taking account that the Census Metropolitan Area includes the City of Gatineau, across the Ottawa River, in the Province of Québec. It is simply impossible to judge a suburb or a city that is part of a metropolitan area and ignore the fact that its amenities, transportation system, jobs, highways etc. are all linked. How would Mississauga’s economy perform if it wasn’t of Toronto, or its airport, (located in Mississauga!)? How would Ottawa do if they didn’t have its pool Gatineau and its pool of 75,000 civil servants living in its more affordable houses, commuting by across the Ottawa River by one of its 5 bridges?

I am not pro-gentrification nor a big fan of downtown living, at least not until my kids will live at home. I myself live in an Ontario suburb of Ottawa, while commuting by train to Montreal a few times a month. However, I am fully aware that my suburb would not exist if not for downtown Ottawa. When 75% of the labour force living in my suburb commutes to downtown Ottawa each day to go to work, if the city had not been amalgamated in 2000, I would have laughed at any ranking that would have considered my suburb as a stand- alone city.

Please guys, you do not rank cities like you rank sports teams.

Rating the Unaffordable: The Economist and Mercer

Wendell Cox — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:26:15 -0400

An article by Carl Bialik in The Wall Street Journal questions the value of city livability ratings, such as lists produced by The Economist and Mercer. This issue has been raised on this site by Owen McShane.

(1) The Wall Street Journal notes a lack of transparency in ratings. In the case of The Economist and Mercer, this starts with the very definition of "city." They don't say. In the case of New York, for example, is the city Manhattan?, the city of New York or the New York metropolitan area. The difference? Manhattan has fewer than 2,000,000 residents, the city about 8,000,000 and the metropolitan area about 20,000,000. That makes a difference. The same problem exists, to differing degrees in the other "cities," whatever they are.

(2) The first principle of livability is affordability. If you cannot afford to live in a city it cannot, by definition, be affordable.

The Economist ranks Vancouver, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Auckland among its top 10 livable cities. In fact, in our 6th Annual International Housing Affordability Survey, these metropolitan areas rank among the 25 least affordable out of 272 metropolitan areas in six nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand). The Economist's champion, Vancouver, is most unaffordable, with Sydney second most unaffordable. Mercer's top 10 list also includes Vancouver, Auckland and Sydney.

By contrast, the three fastest growing metropolitan areas with more than 5,000,000 population in the developed world, (Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston) have housing that is one-half to one-third as expensive relative to incomes (using the Median Multiple: the median house price divided by the median household income) as all of the "cities" noted above in the two lists.

Purpose of the Lists: The purpose of these lists, for all their difficulties, is often missed. The Economist and Mercer do not rate livability for average people, but rather for international executives. Thus, the lists are best understood as rating cities for people with a lot of money and a big expense account. The lists may be useful if one is contemplating a move from Manhattan's Upper East Side to London's Mayfair.

Unfortunately, The Economist and Mercer lists are often treated by the press as if they rate the quality of life for average citizens, which they most surely do not.

The average Vancouverite does not live on English Bay, nor does the average Sydneysider have a view of the Harbour Bridge. Because of escalating house prices, they are far more likely to live in rental units, with the hope of home ownership having made impossibly expensive by rationing, through restrictive land use policies, of an intensity that not even OPEC would dare adopt.

Texas Dominates Milken's New Best Performing Cities Index

Mark Schill — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:55:23 -0500

Texas metropolitan regions hold down four of the top five and nine of the top 16 places in Milken's new Best Performing Cities Index, released this morning. The rankings were authored by previous New Geography Contributor Ross DeVol, director of Regional Economics at Milken.

It's refreshing to see a set of rankings attempting to take an objective, hard data-based look at comparative analysis. The Milken Rankings are a combination of job growth, wage and salary growth, high-tech GDP growth, and high-tech location quotients (see page 8 of the report).

A region's industry mix plays a big role in its ranking; you can see energy-centric regions scoring well. But remember that these rankings also explicitly factor in high tech growth and high tech concentration.

Regions that avoided real estate inflation and those maintaining what they have or simply avoiding rapid decline tend to score better.

“‘Best performing’ sometimes means retaining what you have,” said DeVol. “In a period of recession, the index highlights metros that have adapted to weather the storm. As we move forward in a recovery that still lacks jobs, metros will be further tested in their ability to sustain themselves.”

The rankings include 324 regions, breaking them into two groups based on region size.

You can view the full lists at Milken's interactive rankings website, and the full report includes analyses of the top large and small places.

Here's the top and bottom 25 Large places:

Top 25 Large Regions			Bottom 25 Large Regions
2009 rank	2008 rank	Metropolitan area	2009 rank	2008 rank	Metropolitan area
1	4	Austin-Round Rock, TX MSA	176	97	Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, FL MSA
2	13	Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX MSA	177	150	Birmingham-Hoover, AL MSA
3	3	Salt Lake City, UT MSA	178	144	Memphis, TN-MS-AR MSA
4	7	McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX MSA	179	117	Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL MD
5	16	Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX MSA	180	120	Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL MSA
6	21	Durham, NC MSA	181	183	Spartanburg, SC MSA
7	9	Olympia, WA MSA	182	178	Wilmington, DE-MD-NJ MD
8	5	Huntsville, AL MSA	183	189	Dayton, OH MSA
9	14	Lafayette, LA MSA	184	73	Merced, CA MSA
10	2	Raleigh-Cary, NC MSA	185	191	Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC MSA
11	15	San Antonio, TX MSA	186	193	Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH MSA
12	29	Fort Worth-Arlington, TX MD	187	170	Providence-New Bed.-Fall Riv., RI-MA MSA
13	23	Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX MD	188	186	South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI MSA
14	37	El Paso, TX MSA	189	185	Kalamazoo-Portage, MI MSA
15	45	Wichita, KS MSA	190	197	Canton-Massillon, OH MSA
16	88	Corpus Christi, TX MSA	191	192	Ann Arbor, MI MSA
17	17	Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA MD	192	187	Atlantic City, NJ MSA
18	40	Baton Rouge, LA MSA	193	188	Youngstown-Warren-Board., OH-PA MSA
19	72	Tulsa, OK MSA	194	190	Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI MSA
20	20	Greeley, CO MSA	195	196	Lansing-East Lansing, MI MSA
21	8	Tacoma, WA MD	196	199	Holland-Grand Haven, MI MSA
22	48	Fort Collins-Loveland, CO MSA	197	198	Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI MD
23	54	Little Rock-N. Little Rock-Conway, AR MSA	198	194	Toledo, OH MSA
24	67	Shreveport-Bossier City, LA MSA	199	200	Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI MD
25	41	Wash.-Arl.-Alex., DC-VA-MD-WV MD	200	195	Flint, MI MSA

And the top and bottom 25 Small regions:

Top 25 Small Regions			Bottom 25 Small Regions
2009 rank	2008 rank	Metropolitan area	2009 rank	2008 rank	Metropolitan area
1	1	Midland, TX MSA	100	110	Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton, NJ MSA
2	7	Longview, TX MSA	101	94	Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna, WV-OH MSA
3	5	Grand Junction, CO MSA	102	114	Williamsport, PA MSA
4	26	Tyler, TX MSA	103	117	Mansfield, OH MSA
5	10	Odessa, TX MSA	104	85	Jackson, TN MSA
6	29	Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, WA MSA	105	115	Muncie, IN MSA
7	15	Bismarck, ND MSA	106	63	Flagstaff, AZ MSA
8	6	Warner Robins, GA MSA	107	112	Racine, WI MSA
9	11	Las Cruces, NM MSA	108	70	Dothan, AL MSA
10	17	Fargo, ND-MN MSA	109	105	Sheboygan, WI MSA
11	45	Pascagoula, MS MSA	110	97	Niles-Benton Harbor, MI MSA
12	23	Sioux Falls, SD MSA	111	100	Altoona, PA MSA
13	8	Bellingham, WA MSA	112	95	Terre Haute, IN MSA
14	38	College Station-Bryan, TX MSA	113	59	Redding, CA MSA
15	2	Coeur d'Alene, ID MSA	114	122	Lima, OH MSA
16	12	Cheyenne, WY MSA	115	75	Janesville, WI MSA
17	81	Texarkana, TX-Texarkana, AR MSA	116	96	Elkhart-Goshen, IN MSA
18	27	Waco, TX MSA	117	119	Anderson, SC MSA
19	16	Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA MSA	118	113	Dalton, GA MSA
20	44	Laredo, TX MSA	119	120	Springfield, OH MSA
21	40	Abilene, TX MSA	120	84	Lewiston-Auburn, ME MSA
22	25	Iowa City, IA MSA	121	116	Muskegon-Norton Shores, MI MSA
23	72	Glens Falls, NY MSA	122	121	Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, MI MSA
24	24	Billings, MT MSA	123	123	Battle Creek, MI MSA
25	64	Ithaca, NY MSA	124	124	Jackson, MI MSA

The Best Places to Avoid a Recession

Mark Hovind — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:53:02 -0400

Would you like to avoid recessions altogether?

You can come close if you live in the right place.

This report looks at the period January 1991 through April 2009 – a period of 220 months that includes three recessions. Since employment rises and falls monthly because of seasonal trends (school year, holiday retail and more), this report uses 12-month employment growth rates as the measurement criteria – the employment in a given month compared to the employment 12 months earlier. This eliminates seasonality and allows us to compare, if you will, apples with apples.

The metric in this analysis is the percent of months where the 12-month employment growth rate is positive.

Using employment growth rates as the measurement criteria:

Alaska is 99.1% recession-proof since employment was growing for 218 months out of 220.

Michigan is 51.8% recession-proof since employment was growing for 114 months out of 220.

Green is 90% or more
Grey is 80% to 90%
Red is 70% to 80%
Black is less than 70%

Some metropolitan areas are also relatively recession-proof:

Area	Share of months where 12-month job growth rate is positive
Grand Junction, CO	100.00%
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX	99.50%
Olympia, WA	99.10%
Bismarck, ND	98.60%
Anchorage, AK	97.70%
Fargo, ND-MN	97.70%
Tyler, TX	97.30%
Greeley, CO	96.80%
Iowa City, IA	96.40%
Sioux Falls, SD	96.40%
Cheyenne, WY	95.90%
Columbia, MO	95.90%
Coeur d'Alene, ID	95.50%
College Station-Bryan, TX	95.50%
Billings, MT	95.00%
Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO	94.50%
Laredo, TX	94.50%
Las Cruces, NM	94.50%
Valdosta, GA	94.50%
Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX	94.10%
Rapid City, SD	94.10%
Bellingham, WA	93.60%
Ogden-Clearfield, UT	93.60%
Knoxville, TN	93.20%
St. George, UT	93.20%

And, unfortunately, some metropolitan areas are not very recession proof:

Area	Share of months where 12-month job growth rate is positive
Baltimore City, MD	17.70%
Flint, MI	28.60%
Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Metro	34.10%
Philadelphia City, PA	35.50%
Dayton, OH	37.30%
Mansfield, OH	38.20%
Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA	41.80%
Muncie, IN	42.70%
Kingston, NY	43.60%
Waterbury, CT NECTA	45.50%
Binghamton, NY	47.30%
Lima, OH	47.30%
Springfield, OH	48.20%
Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI	49.10%
Lansing-East Lansing, MI	50.00%
Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, MI	50.50%
Ann Arbor, MI	51.40%
Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH	52.70%
Decatur, IL	52.70%
Terre Haute, IN	53.60%
Canton-Massillon, OH	54.10%
Battle Creek, MI	54.50%
Jackson, MI	55.00%
Niles-Benton Harbor, MI	55.00%

You can’t necessarily judge a metropolitan area by its State’s employment growth rates. For example, Georgia is only 73.6% recession-proof yet Valdosta is 94.5%. Indiana is 74.5% yet Indianapolis is 90.0%. Missouri is 72.3% yet Columbia is 95.9%.

A complete list of states and metropolitan areas is available at http://jobbait.com/a/rpa.htm.

The data in this report present only part of a recession-proof picture of states and metropolitan areas. Think of them as a long-term picture from 1990 through April 2009. They do not necessarily represent what’s happening today. For example, Olympia WA which is the second-most recession-proof metropolitan area long term has declines in the last two months, March and April 2009. And, this will change next month and the month after.

This report was written by Mark Hovind, President of JobBait. Mark helps six and seven figure executives find jobs by going directly to the decision-makers most likely to hire them. Mark can be reached through www.JobBait.com or by email at Mark@JobBait.com.

Visualizing our 2009 Best Cities for Job Growth Rankings

Mark Schill — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:00:34 -0400

Here's some great maps of our annual Best Cities Rankings created by Robert Morton at Tableau Software. Robert used their software tool to plot a color coded point for each city in the rankings by size group, and immediate geographic patterns emerge:

Check out Robert's post for a map of the biggest gainers and losers from last year, and a rank change by size scatter plot of each place.

Milken's List of Top-performing Cities Heavy with Small Metro Areas

Andy Sywak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:22:42 -0400

The Milken Institute just released its report about the country's top-performing cities. The list is heavy with the names of small and mid-size cities and also has a good deal in common with Inc.'s Best Cities list which came out a few months prior. The list of the top ten with last year's ranking is below:

1. Provo-Orem, Utah (8)
2. Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina (10)
3. Salt Lake City, Utah (18)
4. Austin-Round Rock, Texas (20)
5. Huntsville, Alabama (16)
6. Wilmington, North Carolina (2)
7. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (7)
8. Tacoma, Washington (50)
9. Olympia, Washington (37 in the 2007 ranking of small metros)
10. Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina (12)

Newgeography has run several articles about the advantages of small cities. "Why Small Cities Rock" and "Sprawl Beyond Sprawl: America Moves to Smaller Metropolitan Areas" are two of them. For an entire list click on the "Small Cities" tab on the home page.