Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ottawa a middle-of-the-pack performer on the world stage

Yesterday the Ottawa Citizen republished a story by Derek Abma of the Financial Post about a report by the Washington DC-based Brookings Institution on the performance of the world's top 200 local economies. The Canadian cities that made the list were Calgary (51st), Edmonton (60th), Vancouver (76th), Toronto (79th), Hamilton (83rd), Ottawa (109th) and Montreal (120th).

The Brookings Institution has a cool interactive map on their website charting the economic performance of these cities over 2010 and 2011. The map covers three time periods: 1993-2007, 2007-2010, and 2010-2011. Each city is symbolized by a circle with the size reflecting the size of the city's economy. 


What the map shows us is that from 1993-2007 Ottawa was a middle-of-the-pack performer, but was actually in one of the higher tiers labelled "Second Strongest" from 2007-2010. During that same period Calgary, the top performing Canadian city during 2010-2011 and 1993-2007, was in the "Second Weakest" category while Toronto was in the "Middle" category. Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton joined Ottawa on the "Second Strongest" list.

There's too much information there to analyze in one blog post, but if you enjoy analysis you can have a field day with their map. Check it out here. Enjoy!

Kevin Bourne
reinventingottawa.blogspot.com

No comments:

Post a Comment