Calgary tops new Mercer ‘ecology ranking’ for cities
ByEach year the ‘Mercer Quality of Living Survey’ causes people to state ‘why do I live here?’ or ‘that makes me proud of my city’. This year the survey takes on a new dimension by adding an ‘ecology ranking’ to the recognized quality of living survey. The inaugural addendum to the survey sees the city of Calgary topping the ecology scores. Although Calgary ranked only 28th overall on the primary survey (within Canada
Calgary tops eco rankings poll
Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal each ranked higher) the city took top spot in the ecology ranking, 320 cities were considered by the data and Calgary narrowly won out ahead of Honolulu and Ottawa. The growing metropolis is home to many of Canada’s headquarters for the oil and gas industry and may surprise some due to the infrastructure of the city. The eco-ranking was based upon set criteria including water availability, water potability, waste removal, sewage, air pollution and traffic congestion. Residents who are routinely sitting in heavy traffic as the morning and evening commutes take place might see things very differently. Alderman Bob Hawkesworth knows it contradicts some preconceived notions about Calgary:
“In one way it’s confirmation of what we suspected, but given the breadth of the survey and the number of cities being included, we’ve done surprisingly well. I know that as we’ve been implementing new initiatives we know we’ve been leading the pack in many ways. We can’t allow ourselves to be painted into a corner of being the bad guys on the environment because people in the oilpatch, people in local government, people all across the province are concerned about the environment as much as anyone else in the world.”
Like many surveys it’s not the perfect measurement and a University of Calgary geography professor feels it doesn’t measure the ideal criteria nor examine the entire situation:
“Frankly the Mercer eco-city ranking strikes me as being quite odd in terms of what they’re measuring. The ranking looks at six things. When you focus on those six things it’s not surprising that Calgary would come out pretty high. Water availability is not an issue here. We have very good quality water. Sewage treatment is a non-issue. We produce plenty of air pollution, but it all blows east so we don’t suffer from it because we’re on the plains and the wind takes it out. Traffic congestion — even though we complain about it — it’s not as bad as most other cities of our size. Look at measures such as eco-footprint measures — we don’t do nearly as well. There was a study done in 2005 comparing the eco-footprints of a number of Canadian cities and we came out the worst.”
His concerns centre around why items such as per capita energy use are not considered. I agree, and hence European and more concentrated populations in North America would probably shade these polls. He suggests that consideration of urban sprawl and the factors that are linked to it would like many Western cities in North America actually show a truer picture.
That said it might be far more positive to reflect on ranking first in the poll and see what can be done to remain in that position. Calgary’s director of environmental and safety management, David Day, confirmed that the city has always done well with water quality and understands that the criteria used by Mercer are very specific which helped Calgary’s score.
“I think that the work we’re doing in terms of water treatment, water conservation and the quality of the water — those are the kind of leading indicators that Mercer is interested in its quality of life ratings,”
Calgary can’t sit still and be satisfied to any greater degree than any other city and the challenges faced are the same as almost everywhere else. Reducing carbon emissions and traffic / fuel consumption have to be tackled on a grander scale for any city to be truly eco-friendly. While the city where I live (Phoenix) is terribly proud of the conversion of so many businesses and homes to solar powered energy, the incessant traffic leaves the air quality very poor in the summer months as the heat and pollution haze engulf the mountain surrounded downtown area.
The rankings for both ‘ecology ranking’ and ‘quality of living’ make for very interesting reading, you can enjoy both via this link.
