So how should we interpret this latest magazine ranking of Canadian cities that has St. Albert at No. 12 overall, third best place to find a job, fifth best to raise a family, but only No. 47 as a place to retire?
It’s interesting that MoneySense magazine, which ranked the city No. 5 overall last year, considers us a great place to raise kids but not to be retiring. So, if we raise our children here but then move out before we reach retirement age, who would be left in St. Albert, given that so many young adults are already leaving because of a lack of jobs and unaffordable housing?
The thing with these types of rankings is they are subjective, the categories don’t always put various cities in the most positive light and some of the data being used is old. Like culture, where St. Albert, despite all its efforts to promote itself as a community full of culture, was only 49th on the list … but the data was from the 2006 census. Who knows where we might rank if the data was current.
It’s hard to swallow that we would be ranked way behind places like Regina – that’s right, REGINA – and Canmore, which is a great place to live if you like the outdoors, but full of culture?
MoneySense rated 190 cities this year, and in the 11 categories it used to determine the overall ratings, St. Albert ranked in the top 25 in only three and all had to do with money: household income, discretionary income and jobless rate.
Who says money can’t buy happiness, at least for those people in the community who actually think these superficial rankings actually are important?
What dragged down St. Albert’s ranking was we placed 170th in people who walk/bike to work (most working St. Albertans drive into Edmonton for their jobs and wouldn’t dare bike down the St. Albert Trail) and 154th in affordable housing, which is no surprise to anyone who lives here.
And it’s in the housing category where the city really lagged behind most cities in the best place to retire ratings. That and the climate, where we were rated 11th, despite one of the best winters in recent memory. Come on, Mr. Mayor, can’t you do something about this weather?
Mayor Nolan Crouse, while generally pleased with this latest subjective piece, acknowledged the city has to improve on the economic development side and housing for seniors.
“With the number of seniors steadily increasing in our community, affordable housing is a priority for council, and with our current situation it is an area that worked against us in this ranking,” he said.
And MoneySense has the city rated No. 3 in places to find a job, behind only Strathcona County and Red Deer. Really? That’s an odd one, given that St. Albert doesn’t have many jobs available beyond the low-paying retail ones. But again, the ranking was weighted heavily on income and our jobless rate. Of course we don’t have much unemployment – without sufficient affordable housing those without jobs have to move out of the city.
So we could moan and groan because we dropped seven placings in the overall ranking or we could take these things the way we should: with a grain of salt, a smile, have a coffee and get on with our day knowing such data-driven snapshots ultimately have almost zero impact on our lives.
