With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1441359
But taking a broader view this time around, we've added indicators that con- sider social and environmental resilience, including a community's sense of belong- ing and its household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A third new indicator exam- ines rental vacancy rates as a barometer for housing availability, while our fourth and final addition—an economic diversity indicator—considers how well represented different industries are among a city's employed residents. To gain more insight into how B.C.'s cit- ies have fared during the past two years, we're spotlighting three regional leaders in resilience. We chatted with local business owners and decision makers from a variety of industries—including food services, performing arts and tech—to find out how they've coped with the pandemic and what they think tomorrow holds. A B R AV E N E W W O R L D E M E R G E S Our second attempt to assess B.C.'s most resilient cities following the onset of COVID has resulted in several notable changes. One of the few cities to maintain its position year-over-year is Langford, at No. 1—making it the top-ranking city for the second time in a row. New additions to this year's top 10 are New Westminster (No. 2), Comox (No. 3), the City of North Vancouver (No. 6) and Coquitlam (No. 9), while Kelowna (No. 4), Parksville (No. 5), the Township of Langley (No. 7), Central Saanich (No. 8) and Courtenay (No. 10) make repeat showings. After bearing the initial brunt of the pandemic, many Metro Vancouver munici- palities saw an impressive reversal of for- tune as rebounding job creation, a robust development industry and the greatest economic diversity in B.C. drove a rally in their scoring. Vancouver (No. 15) and Rich- mond (No. 21), two of last year's poorest performers, leapt ahead 30 and 25 spots, respectively. On the other end of the resilience spec- trum, several of the province's historically more resources-dependent towns, such as Port Alberni (No. 46), Prince Rupert 32 BCBUSINESS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 BEST CITIES FOR WORK IN B.C. 2021 RANK 2020 RANK COMMUNITY FIVE-YEAR POPULATION GROWTH (10% WEIGHT) HOUSEHOLD FINANCIAL VULNERABILITY (15%) RESIDENT SENSE OF BELONGING (5%) RESIDENTIAL GHG EMISSIONS PER 10,000 POPULATION (5%) 1 1 LANGFORD 15.0% 122 90 5,115 2 37 NEW WESTMINSTER 11.2% 114 95 4,923 3 11 COMOX 10.0% 101 96 10,283 4 10 KELOWNA 9.0% 100 93 10,585 5 2 PARKSVILLE 6.7% 95 95 10,685 6 36 CITY OF NORTH VANCOUVER 9.3% 104 98 5,724 7 4 TOWNSHIP OF LANGLEY 7.8% 106 98 12,663 8 9 CENTRAL SAANICH 6.4% 93 105 4,448 9 43 COQUITLAM 9.6% 110 101 9,592 10 7 COURTENAY 8.4% 106 96 8,750 11 39 DISTRICT OF NORTH VANCOUVER 5.7% 97 105 12,161 12 15 SUMMERLAND 3.3% 101 102 13,024 13 14 SECHELT 5.6% 94 100 10,491 14 33 BURNABY 5.9% 99 84 8,466 15 45 VANCOUVER 4.4% 87 88 7,172 16 31 VICTORIA 4.5% 98 92 8,811 17 6 SALMON ARM 6.2% 89 98 15,261