White Rock 140th best community in Canada: Macleans

White Rock has bolstered its standing in a Maclean’s magazine ranking of Canada’s best communities.

And while the city has not hit the list’s top-10 – it’s 140th out of 415 – it is ranked higher than 20 other B.C. communities, including Surrey, which came in at 182nd, Mission (147) and Richmond (178).

And it has climbed since 2019 when, ranked at 236th, it fell behind most other Lower Mainland communities.

The ranking – described as a “remote-worker version” of the magazine’s annual undertaking – considered housing affordability, population growth, taxes, crime, weather, access to health care, amenities and community engagement.

Those categories differ somewhat from previous years due to the pandemic, and “assumes remote work is here to stay,” Maclean’s explains of its methodology, noting categories that assess the local economy have been removed, while another category assessing internet quality was added.

Features found most important in White Rock were internet access, community and weather, while in Surrey the top three features were internet access, amenities and health.

The top-ranked B.C. community was Langford, in 18th place.

The ranking, notes Maclean’s, was done “with an eye toward great living for people who don’t have to worry about finding a job within commuting distance.”

In 2018, White Rock made the Maclean’s list of most dangerous places to live in the Lower Mainland. That list ranked communities according to the crime severity index (CSI), a Statistics Canada measure of all police-reported crime, which takes into consideration both the volume and seriousness of offences.

READ MORE: White Rock included on Maclean’s ‘most dangerous places’ listing

In that report, the city ranked 89th – ahead of Surrey (164), Langley (141), North Vancouver (95), North Vancouver District (119), Burnaby (202), New Westminster (225), Maple Ridge (98), and Mission (230).

A different picture was painted when looking at all crime statistics, however.

Through that lens, White Rock placed 115th – better than Langley (9), Vancouver (42), City of North Vancouver (97), Surrey (47), Burnaby (94), New Westminster (95), Maple Ridge (83), Mission (62), and Abbotsford (69).