Vancouver might be a beautiful city that attracts its share of Hollywood film productions and boasts some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but we are also a terribly insecure city, constantly in need of positive reinforcement and unable to stop comparing ourselves to others.
How else to explain yet another story trotted out in the local media about Vancouver’s supposed international ranking. According to the latest and surely not last survey tabulating the quality of living of cities around world, Vancouver nabbed the top spot for North American cities while placing fifth globally, behind top-ranked Vienna, Zurich, Auckland and Munich.
Such information might be mildly interesting if it weren’t so frequent. Every few months, another think tank compiles a list of the most livable, affordable, expensive, environmentally minded, spiritually awakened or friendly cities, and Vancouver’s place somewhere on that spectrum becomes a story in our local newspaper and news broadcasts and has about as much impact and significance as the latest research results on the health impacts of popcorn.
Do we really care that Vancouver is more livable than Montreal but less livable than Vienna? And what does that even mean exactly? And if Auckland is so more livable than Vancouver, why aren’t we moving en masse to New Zealand?
Because it just doesn’t matter.
Whether some research company decides Vancouver is the fifth most livable city in the world or the 15th, the only thing it proves is that editors will print anything about how Vancouver stacks up because readers will read anything abut how Vancouver stacks up. Just check your Facebook feed. The combination of insecurity and shallowness can be breathtaking. But at least Vancouver’s good at it. Top three, probably. Maybe even number one.
