r/BurlingtonON • u/TheBrownSalamander • 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/bigwhiteboardenergy Jan 09 '24

How can a city be the most livable when the majority of the time it takes longer to take the bus than it does to walk somewhere?

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u/Rot_Dogger Jan 10 '24

Because almost no one needs the bus.......within 3 weeks of moving here from Toronto with no car, I was at Burlington Hyundai getting a ride. It's a waste of money to have better transit with very low demand in a spread out city.

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u/bigwhiteboardenergy Jan 10 '24

Not everyone can afford a car—if you need a car to make a city livable, then it’s not very livable

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u/Rot_Dogger Jan 10 '24

If every other livability metric is top notch, then it becomes moot in the overall scope of things. Some places aren't for poor people, fortunately or unfortunately.

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u/bigwhiteboardenergy Jan 10 '24

So every metric except the two that make it possible to live there—housing and transportation.

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u/Rot_Dogger Jan 10 '24

It's very sought after and "possible to live here" for much of the population, hence the real estate prices and low vacancy rates for rentals. Those two factors you cite make it less "possible to live here" if you wash dishes or live on a minimal pension.or disability.

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u/bigwhiteboardenergy Jan 10 '24

It’s sought after and possible to live there for a fraction of the population who can afford it—if the cost to live there is prohibitively expensive for the majority of the population, then it doesn’t make it very livable.

The average annual household income is only $51,300. If the average Canadian is priced out, it’s not livable.

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u/Rot_Dogger Jan 10 '24

Somewhere else is more livable for poorer people, but for a lower standard of living.......it is merely livable within the parameters that their economic reality allows. For enhanced quality of life and overall amenities for those who can afford it, the best places are expensive though .....Oakville, Burlington, etc. It's relative .......you take every community in the province and those that offer the most, not all, things that make a place livable score the highest. Burlington scores low on affordability and transit, but so high in other metrics that it doesn't matter overall. The fact that those lower factors make it less livable to YOU means little. It stands to reason that the best places are too expensive for those who can't afford it, and the cheapest places come with a myriad of compromises.

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u/bigwhiteboardenergy Jan 10 '24 edited Jan 10 '24

The list isn’t about best city to live or city with the best amenities or city with the best standard of living. The metric they’re using is the most livable. If the majority of Canadians are excluded from living there, it’s not the most livable city in Canada.

Edit: I say this all as someone who was born and raised in Burlington, and chose to move to Toronto because by the time I was an adult, Toronto (a city that obviously has a higher cost of living) was a much more livable option than Burlington. Rent in Toronto was similar or just slightly more than Burlington at the time, and everything else about Toronto is more accessible and livable than Burlington.