Photo via Flickr user Rick Harris
Canadians will take whatever little compliment they can find to shit on the rest of the world.We really don't have that much up here. We have a small(ish) population, we're viewed as the quiet polite people who live in a cold utopia—even though we have the same goddamn problems. Frankly, if America is Coors, we're Coors Light.So, up here in the land of the Great White North, we take what we can get and the following is one of those things. The tidbit in this case comes from The Economist, which just released its annual list of the "world's most liveable cities," and Canada has three in the top five.Whoo-hoo.Just like last year, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver round out the number five, four and three spots respectively. Melbourne and Vienna were the only cities to top them. This is all well and good but, as we've reported time and time again, if you want to live in Toronto or Vancouver and aren't making fuckbuckets of cash—good luck. So, I guess enjoy Calgary, you fucks.[Editor's note: the writer of this article is from Edmonton, Calgary's sister city, and is bitter that it didn't score as high.]In the Economists Intelligence Unit's summary, the top four are very, very close and are only separated by a decimal point of a percentage. Calgary however is a full percentile lower. The least livable cities were Damascus, Tripoli, Lagos, Dhaka, and Port Moresby.The Economist ranks these cities by analyzing "30 qualitative and quantitative factors
across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and
infrastructure." They state that, overall, because of political and economic strife that livability has been falling globally."Over the past six months 16 cities of the 140 surveyed have experienced changes in scores," reads the summation. "This rises to 35 cities, or 25 percent of the total number surveyed, when looking at changes over the past year. Of these changes, the majority have been negative (29 in the past 12 months), reflecting deteriorating stability as cities around the world face heightened threats of terrorism or unrest."Still though, up here in Canada, a few of us will do our little Canuck dance and talk about how great we are while the rest of the world continues to not care.Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.
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across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and
infrastructure." They state that, overall, because of political and economic strife that livability has been falling globally."Over the past six months 16 cities of the 140 surveyed have experienced changes in scores," reads the summation. "This rises to 35 cities, or 25 percent of the total number surveyed, when looking at changes over the past year. Of these changes, the majority have been negative (29 in the past 12 months), reflecting deteriorating stability as cities around the world face heightened threats of terrorism or unrest."Still though, up here in Canada, a few of us will do our little Canuck dance and talk about how great we are while the rest of the world continues to not care.Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.