Aurora ranked York Region's best place to live

Yorkregion.com
March 12, 2014
By Tim Kelly

Aurora has been named one of the top 25 places to live in Canada - and the darling community of York Region - if you believe the editors of Moneysense magazine.

Newmarket slipped this year from its lofty perch as the 10th best community to call home to a more humbling 31st spot in the national rankings.

But for York’s largest municipality, Vaughan, it was more of a slide.

Vaughan really was the city above most others last year when it took No. 23 in the magazine’s annual ranking of best Canadian communities - up from 102 in 2012.

When the rankings were released today, however, Vaughan found itself down 33 spots to No. 56 on the list of Canada’s top 201 places to live; still well above the 2012 placement.

The city also fell out of the top 10 in mid-sized Canadian cities (100,000 to 400,000 population), slipping to 19th and, unlike its runnerup status as best place to live for immigrants, Vaughan wasn’t even in the top 10 this year, according to editors of the magazine.

For the other York Region municipalities that made the list, Aurora rose to No. 24 in the country from No. 58 one year ago, almost flipping spots with Vaughan.

Richmond Hill garnered a respectable No. 50 ranking while Markham settled for No. 80. Similar to Vaughan, Markham rose from 135th spot in 2012 all the way to 34 in 2013.

Go west young man/woman is the mantra this year with St. Albert, Alta. - a city of 64,000 outside Edmonton - ranking first overall this year, knocking last year’s top city, Calgary, down to second.

Toronto ranked 32.

The rankings, now in their ninth year, rate cities on 34 criteria, including income levels, employment, housing prices, public transportation, weather, crime rates and access to medical professionals.