Ying and yang
St. John’s and Saint John find themselves on opposite ends of the desirability spectrum

If you’re not attracting new people to your city, the economy is going to suffer.

That’s the opinion of the Conference Board of Canada, which issued a report in September (“City Magnets III”) that ranked 50 Canadian cities to see where each of them ranked as far as being attractive to mobile populations. Attracting new people to a city is important, the Board says in the report, because “cities failing to attract new people will struggle to stay prosperous and vibrant.”

Considering cities that are prosperous and vibrant tend to be pretty good places to do business, entrepreneurs should be interested to see what cities came out on top, and ended up at the bottom, in the report. Of the 50 cities ranked, four Atlantic Canadian cities were included: St. John’s, Halifax, Saint John and Moncton. St. John’s came out as the highest ranked city among the four (sixth overall), while Saint John was the lowest (44th – ouch!) The report compared the performance of the 50 cities across seven categories: economy, society, health, environment, innovation, education and housing.

Here’s a glimpse of how each of the four cities from Atlantic Canada measured up.