Because they don't consider how much it costs to live there. /thread
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Calgary is the only one with a decent cost of living. You can get a single detached for 400k. You can buy an apartment starting at 120k. Not unreasonable
Yeah but the only downside is you have to live in Alberta, though.
(I am kidding... Calgary is a nice city, but the current ruling party are extreme Canadian magas so also not kidding.)
I wouldn't live in any of them. 1. They're cities. 2. Winter(especially there) is a bitch
Whoever wrote this has never lived in that kind of winter. I have. Eff that. Makes those places a zero, from the start
Oh yeah, Vancouver really gives northern Siberia a run for its money during the winter. Human beings just aren’t built to survive one or two days of snow every couple years. Best you stay far away and live somewhere pleasant, like rural Texas.
You want to bet he also lives in a city, too?
In my experience, time these "cities bad I'd never live in them!" types, the ones who brag about living in the countryside, usually live a 15 minute + traffic highway commute from a small city that they entirely rely on to function day to day. They just live in suburbs or "exurbs" that would not function without the nearby town's urban residents.
It's frustrating how many people cannot comprehend that there is a whole spectrum of urban life from the major skyrise metropolises of the world to a small town's main street, all of which are cities and all of which benefit from policies that create mixed-use, walkable, human-centric neighborhoods.
I always find it painfully eye-roll-inducing when anyone claims they live the rural life while surrounded by metropolitan infrastructure like municipal water/sewer, highways, fire protection, parks/rec/landscaping service, and all that kind of stuff.
Tru dat. Met a lot of people in my life who claimed to live in a "rural area" but in reality they lived in a suburb that was surrounded by real rural areas. A 20 minute drive just to do groceries doesn't make some place inherently rural, it just means that there's bad city planning.
Increasingly they live on what they can buy at a dollar store next to the freeway. That's not any better though.
Lol
However, 45 days in a row of rain can do a number on your state of mind, though. (I used to live in Vancouver.)
Also, fuck Texas. It's hot as balls.
As I said elsewhere, snow has little to do with how uncomfortable a place is.
The combo of humidity and temp tells a much greater story.
But yea, keep on insulting someone you know nothing about, sunshine. I'd bet a years salary I've lived and worked in a far greater variety of places than you've ever seen. I can also read charts of weather, and understand what it means in human terms.
I wouldn’t live in any of them. 1. They’re cities
Maybe a list of most livable cities isn't for you then.
Good point! 🤣
Winter is really mild in Vancouver and for the past 15 years it hasn't been that bad in Toronto either.
Good luck affording housing here though.
I live about 30 mins from vancouver in the US, and winter in this region really isn't that bad. I could see it for the other cities, but in this region we have years where it doesn't even snow at all. The last "bad winter" we had was about 2 years ago, and before that maybe 5 years ago?
Snowfall isn't an indicator of much. Cold is, and for how long. And how long/short the days are. And daily swings, daily max/min, humidity, etc.
I've lived in places with warmer temps and higher humidity and more wind, and those winters are bitter as hell (Mid Atlantic). And I've lived in places with lower lows but very low humidity, and that's much milder.
Anything east of the Mississippi and north of about Tenessee/KY has bitter winters, farther north even worse. Winter in places like NH can be particularly butter because of the combo.
Okay but they just said "winter is a bitch" which is more of a subjective unquantifiable statement. My personal best assumption for that is about snow, but I don't think any form of climate is a better measure for what is and is not "a bitch"
Those are fairly mild winters dude, have you ever lived north of Tennessee?
I have. Far north of there. Fuck Canadian winters.
Damn, I just remembered I literally have not been north of Tennessee. And I've seen snow only a handful of times.
It's always funny to see other urbanists focus so heavily on how winters make cycling hard when winter is basically the only time I'm not drowning in the hot, humid air of the US south.
I would love to live in toronto but I live in chicago now.
My experience is only from Vancouver and though I've visited many times, I don't live there, but
The public transportation and mixed zoning is something that I wish every city had. The city is massive but it feels cozy and entirely accessible.
Vancouver resident here. A great deal of the city of Vancouver and surrounding Lower Mainland are suburbs. The mixed-zoned areas tend to be some of the most expensive and have been gentrified to hell or are in the process of doing so.
Vancouver also has some of the worst traffic in Canada (and North America, if I remember right) and most of the buses here get stuck in gridlock traffic and are frequently late. Our passenger train system, the SkyTrain, is our best option but it is limited in where it has stations and Vancouver's immense wealth disparity and poor treatment of homeless often leaves the SkyTrain in a state of filth or feeling unsafe.
I've lived here all my life and will likely have to leave soon. Vancouver is not a livable city by any means; it's one of the most expensive places to live in North America. This is a very beautiful city with many amazing places to see and visit but it has a lot of darkness and suffering under that thin surface and less than nothing is being done about it. For every beautiful tourist destination there are numerous streets full of homeless camps, littered with feces, and drug addicts stumbling around without any help.
This is based on old data, I believe. Maybe ten or twenty years ago sure. But now it is only feasible to move here if you earn 300,000+ a year, whee!
I was going to ask if livable included affordable.
It must not be included in their requirements... which means its not a very useful list
I mean, If you're only only going to have five cities, you can concentrate on doing them right /s
real answer: Because the majority of their cities are in the Midwest
I've deleted and redrafted this several times now... but am I unreasonable for being weirded out and a bit offended by how out of touch rich-and-powerful-people journalism is? Canada, like Australia, is soaked in blood. This is just public image laundry for a country with the same genocide cops and resource extraction monstrosities as all the other colonies, and I'm guessing most of the people reading a niche link aggregator aren't really the target audience.
If things like this are going to try and memory hole the crimes of a state, we should conscientiously memory hole crappy fluff pieces like this. Who's moving to Canada? Who has the ability to initiate infrastructure projects or run funding requests up the political ladder?
If nothing else, just as a personal request. I just spent a long time trying to stay calm and articulate (or relative to my original state upon reading this) because this really made my blood boil.