Youthful Cities has nearly ten years of experience working with data to rank cities both in Canada and globally. The 6 Urban Attributes – connectedness, openness, dynamism, playfulness, curiosity, and inventiveness – help us shape our indicators and give our work a unique perspective.
Indexes help us to quantify and rank cities on topics that may be hard to measure otherwise. For example, what city is the most youthful? The best place to work? The most affordable? These indexes always generate a buzz of media interest. The Real Affordability Index 2021, for example, generated 750 million media impressions. While only one city gets the top spot in the overall ranking, every city has areas where they excel and that they can celebrate. On the flip side, indexes provide insight on possible areas of improvement that cities can use to make their communities more youthful.
The data we collect for indexes falls under the category of “small data.” Small data is defined as follows:
This small data can have a big impact. All the data we collect for our indexes is openly shared on our open data portal.
What topics, indicators, and measurements do we want to explore? What are the goals of this index? Who do we want to generate a conversation or action with?
In addition to the core Youthful Cities team, local youth are hired to collect data that cannot be found in central databases.
Ultimately, an index is a collection of indicators that evaluates communities for success. So for each index we must ask, what do we want to capture, and how can we measure it? What is already measured? Where is data available? Can we create new ways of collecting data?
Data collectors are trained to ensure data is as accurate and trustworthy as possible. Where there are barriers to data collection, we have to do consultation to understand and gauge cultural sensitivity and data collection practices within these spaces.
Data is looked at for outliers that can skew the results. Any value that seems off or unexpected gets rechecked.
Is the index topical or comprehensive? If it is the latter, weighting needs to be applied. The appropriate weighting is determined by surveying the target group. (I.e., how important is x to you?)
Through max-min normalization, where the top city in each indicator gets 100 points and the bottom city gets 0, the data is scaled. All other cities are given points based on how close they are to the top city. This scaling makes it easier to compare data and ensures that each indicator is of equal weight to another. Cities are given a score based on an average of their scores across a set of indicators for each topic.
On average young people are losing $750 per month by living in cities across the country. To break even young people would need to isolate themselves- no entertainment, no transportation, and no dining out. With 27 cities, 54 measures, and 2414 data points examined in the Real Affordability Index, we can conclude that this generation is currently still working to afford the toast, let alone the avocado.
Affordability for young people should take into account more than the bare minimum necessary to survive but what it would take to thrive. That’s why we made the Real Affordability Index, to be able to really look at what it costs to live, work, and play in Canadian cities.
Data for the index was collected and examined through measures to represent the diversity of young people living in our cities. Lenses that the data is examined include gender, career, full-time work/part-time work, age cohort, and variations in wage. In partnership with RBC Future Launch, the Real Affordability Index shows that the lack of affordability in Canadian Cities for young people will have ripple effects across the country.
Released in May 2022, the Real Affordability Index showcased nationwide issues of youth affordability. The index grabbed the attention of media, cities, and policy makers. Take a look at our process.
