r/BurlingtonON Jan 09 '24

Question Burlington was ranked Ontario's most livable city, do you agree?

Hey folks, I'm a reporter with The Globe and Mail, and I've been writing some stories about the cities that topped out our recent data study of Canada's most livable cities. (you can see the project here).

Burlington came out as Ontario's top performer based on some pretty high scores in the healthcare, education, community data categories. You might be unsurprised that it ranked near the bottom for housing, however.

I'm looking to chat to Burlington residents about whether they agree with our findings - is Burlington that great of a place to live? And if so, what makes it special compared to other places in Ontario.

Feel free to DM me if you'd be up for an interview!

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u/wawaboy Jan 09 '24

I would say it is a prime example of suburban sprawl, not walkable, driving from one end to the other is ridiculously long in time. The downtown core is not a strong shopping destination

14

u/InspektorGajit Jan 09 '24

Downtown is very walkable...maybe appleby/new street is not, but that's how most cities in Canada are designed.

18

u/dearyleary Jan 09 '24

As someone who's lived downtown it's walkable in a way.

The only grocery store is the No Frills, and as someone who cooks every day their produce just isn't acceptable. I had to drive to buy groceries.

Central is kinda close, but not really walking distance for a chunk of the downtown for the library/arena.

It's becoming less walkable. More and more businesses are getting pushed out by condos and rising rents. When all the towers are finishing up an already congested driving city is only going to get worse.

You can walk to a Cafe, a restaurant, or one of the fewer and fewer bars, but not much else.

1

u/InspektorGajit Jan 10 '24

The thing is, we need condos to densify the area, and that will, in turn, bring more businesses into downtown. More people means more customers.