LONDON, Ontario – On April 29th, 2010, MoneySense magazine released their 5th annual ranking of Canada’s Best Places to Live 2010. London ranked 12th of 179 cities.
Rankings are based on practical matters that are important for a person’s long-term happiness: affordable housing, prosperity, ease of travel, and good health care. They look for cities that show healthy growth, but aren’t sprawling out of control. They do not give any marks for alpine scenery, sandy beaches, charming heritage buildings or other qualities that attract tourists. They focus on things that can be quantified with hard data.
Included in the rankings are cities and towns of at least 10,000 people.
Weather is the most influential category in the rankings. They award a city up to six points in each of three areas: the amount of rain and snow, the number of wet days per year, and the number of days below freezing. Cities earn up to two additional points for air quality, as measured by the amount of ground-level ozone and particulate matters its residents are forced to breathe.
Peter White, President and CEO at the London Economic Development Corporation said he is very pleased with London’s ranking. “When businesses are looking for communities to invest in, major decision factors are access to an available workforce, infrastructure, access to market and business costs. But rankings by organizations such as MoneySense are also considered. Quality of Life factors are very important as senior executives consider which communities they want to relocate to, quite often with their families. Affordable housing, crime rates, and weather are only some of the categories that we are asked to provide detailed statistics for, and are factored into final decisions. The publicity around third party rankings are very helpful in raising London’s profile as a good place to invest.”
The full details can be found at http://www.moneysense.ca/2010/04/29/canadas-best-places-to-live-2010/.
For more information, please contact:
Lesley Cornelius
Director, Marketing & Communications
LEDC
519-661-5009
lcornelius@ledc.com
