Nanaimo is a hot destination, according to a study by Resonance Consultancy.
It was labelled the 20th best small city in Canada, and was #1 in all of Canada for people who were looking to relocate. It’s also 13th in population growth, after the city’s population grew by 35% since 2001.
President of Resonance Consultancy, Chris Fair, says the list is generated by looking for how well it attracts residents, visitors, and businesses.
“We can look at things like the number of people moving to a city from Statistics Canada or we can look at the number of sunny days, and what weather that a city has from Environment Canada,” said Fair. “These are publicly available statistics and data sources.”
Fair says they can also take into account how many restaurants there are, what the nightlife is like, as well as how the parks are.
“Nanaimo has a lot of the small town charm but some larger city type amenities and access to parks and recreation,” said Fair. “We can see that in the data actually that Nanaimo ranked #1 in the country for air quality and ranks #5 for the number of quality nature parks and outdoor activities.”
Fair says the data is researched online using things like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and other online publicly available sources.
“Cities in BC performed quite well in our rankings with six out of the top twenty five in British Columbia. I think that speaks to all of the great assets that we have but some of the challenges, as it relates to the need to create more housing in order to keep these places attainable and somewhat affordable for people to consider moving there in the future.”
Kamloops came in at 18th, and Victoria was named the best small city.
