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Toronto is now the 2nd most expensive city to live in in North America, says new survey

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 12:29 PM
By: Momin Qureshi


Toronto - Gas prices and taxes are up and even buying a home has become more expensive - so it comes as no surprise that Toronto is one of the most expensive places to live in North America, according to a new survey.

The ranking is from the annual Mercer's cost of living survey from the UK. This year's results have Toronto vaulting over L.A. and Miami - making it the second most expensive city to live in North America, just behind New York.

The survey looked at how expensive it is for companies to relocate employees, said Danielle Bushen, who is the principal at Mercer in Toronto.

"Canada has historically been a very cost-effective place to send people. We have pretty good low cost of living and relatively high quality of living so it's easy to get employees to take assignments in Canada. Now I think we have a situation where relative to other major centres, we are not as cheap as we use to be."

Bushen explained the rising Canadian dollar has pushed many Canadian cities up the ranks.

"The US dollar's dropped a lot over the last year - its weakened quite a bit. And that's had an impact on the entire ranking. And so Canadian cities - in particular - have come up the ranking. The Canadian dollar has become relatively stronger in the global arena. Many cities around the world have the appearance of being relatively more expensive on a global scale."

The only North American city to crack the global top 50 was New York.

But, Toronto jumped 28 spots from last year to land at number 54 on the global scale.

Moscow remains the most expensive city to live in in the world. While Tokyo, London, Oslo in Norway and Seoul in South Korea rounded out the top five.

 

[CGM]

From an article I read, a cup of coffee is $10 in Moscow ... Didn't mention where from... but I can only guess.

 

[ducati0000]

If I had the money I be in Vancouver.Toronto is my birth place but Vancouver is where I can really have the best of both worlds (nature and city living).I'm so tired of Toronto trying to pass it self as a "world class city",it was clean and safe once but that was 10 years ago.Unless we get people who can actually plan a city for the future instead of patch work BS we might be in the same league as the true "world class cities" on this planet.Toronto is a true melting pot of all the races on this world that actually gets a long but we have too many people who has large egos and personally agendas to make this a great city.

 

[Dichotomy]

C'mon now, Toronto is world class:

Expensive like New York, traffic like L.A., transit like Mumbai, parks like Detroit....what's not to like?

 

[ducati0000]

C'mon now, Toronto is world class:

Expensive like New York, traffic like L.A., transit like Mumbai, parks like Detroit....what's not to like?

Haha..we need the 1000+ murders to be like LA and Detroit.Dubai is amazing city,but of course will trillions of oil money pouring in they can build what ever please.Toronto has it charm but no real cutting edge vision.We try to copy other cities programs but never really able to create its own image.A lot of amazing people are in Toronto too bad they are held back because of bickering between parties and special interest groups.

 

[Hydrogen]

To say that the price of a home in Toronto went up is one thing; to neglect a reference to the collapse of the U.S. housing market is another. I had to laugh when Toronto and Miami were mentioned in the same sentence. The Miami housing market is in a coma. Things like this help explain the huge jump in the status of Toronto on this questionable list.

 

[isittimetomoveyet]

To say that the price of a home in Toronto went up is one thing; to neglect a reference to the collapse of the U.S. housing market is another. I had to laugh when Toronto and Miami were mentioned in the same sentence. The Miami housing market is in a coma. Things like this help explain the huge jump in the status of Toronto on this questionable list.

Good point.

 

[isittimetomoveyet]

Haha..we need the 1000+ murders to be like LA and Detroit.Dubai is amazing city,but of course will trillions of oil money pouring in they can build what ever please.Toronto has it charm but no real cutting edge vision.We try to copy other cities programs but never really able to create its own image.A lot of amazing people are in Toronto too bad they are held back because of bickering between parties and special interest groups.

No disrespect intended, I'm just curious what you are referring to. Can you provide a couple examples of some of these cities and their visions and such?

 

[PukeGreen]

To say that the price of a home in Toronto went up is one thing; to neglect a reference to the collapse of the U.S. housing market is another. I had to laugh when Toronto and Miami were mentioned in the same sentence. The Miami housing market is in a coma. Things like this help explain the huge jump in the status of Toronto on this questionable list.

Exactly... has Toronto really "jumped" so far up the list, or have many of the US cities ahead of it simply gone down the tubes over the past year? I find it puzzling that the relative strength of the Canadian economy compared to the US one is being portrayed here as a negative thing.

If I had the money I be in Vancouver. Toronto is my birth place but Vancouver is where I can really have the best of both worlds (nature and city living).

"If I had the money I be in Vancouver" is an odd thing to say in a thread that is proclaiming that Toronto is now more expensive to live in than Vancouver. Go! I'm sure they'd love to have you

 

[Dichotomy]

Toronto's economy is in a coma, it just hasn't been reported yet by the 'proper' authorities.

 

[TrickyRicky]

"If I had the money I be in Vancouver.Toronto is my birth place but Vancouver is where I can really have the best of both worlds (nature and city living).I'm so tired of Toronto trying to pass it self as a "world class city",it was clean and safe once but that was 10 years ago.Unless we get people who can actually plan a city for the future instead of patch work BS we might be in the same league as the true "world class cities" on this planet.Toronto is a true melting pot of all the races on this world that actually gets a long but we have too many people who has large egos and personally agendas to make this a great city."

I'm sorry ducati0000 to poke fun, I'm sure this is your honest opinion, but I think long time members of this forum would agree that that post has a humorous density of eye rolling phrases and mis-conceptions. Which gets me thinking we should have a contest for who can come up with the best such post. We could brainstorm a list of possible terms such as:

-World Class
-Melting Pot
-Bland
-Centre of the Universe
-Decline
-etc.

Help me out here.

 

[Dichotomy]

Are you saying you think Toronto is 'world class?' I'm not sure I get your meaning?

You would seriously put Toronto in the same class as New York, Paris, or Berlin? Is that your opinion?

 

[TrickyRicky]

If you were addressing the post I just made Dichotomy. The point was that terms like "world class" have a history of use and miss-use in this city, it's media and on forums such as this that they have rendered them so meaningless that they have become funny, at least to people who follow such things.

 

[junctionist]

Are you saying you think Toronto is 'world class?' I'm not sure I get your meaning?

You would seriously put Toronto in the same class as New York, Paris, or Berlin? Is that your opinion?

Although that term is highly ambiguous, this city is on the stratum of many world cities. This Wikipedia article might be of help in providing some criteria.

My personal view is that New York, London and Tokyo are the top cities in this regard, while we're one level down.

 

[Dirk]

Yes, but that article is about a study by GaWC that was done in 1999. Here is the results. I find these results disputable and am surprised by how high we are on this list. However, this is from 1999, and Beijing for example has probably jumped from a gamma to beta city, so the rankings are not the best to cite.