How a city earns its score
City Energy Score is a research instrument for asking — seriously — how much energy a place has. It bundles two questions that usually live in separate rooms: does this city work as a place to build a life? and does the land underneath it have favourable shape?
The five pillars
Each city is scored 0–100 on five pillars. Each pillar is a weighted basket of factors drawn from official sources (Statistics Canada, BC Stats, CMHC, WorkBC, Environment Canada), established journalism, and on-the-ground inventories (yoga studios, naturopaths, farmers markets, walk scores). Confidence is reported per city.
Economic Momentum
30% weightIncome, housing affordability, job growth, business formation, cost of living, population projection.
Demographic Vitality
25% weightPopulation trend, median age, youth proportion, migration, education, diversity.
Social & Cultural Energy
20% weightArts, events, food, nightlife, diversity, community spirit.
Physical Environment
15% weightNatural beauty, climate, air quality, nature access, walkability, green space.
Wellness Infrastructure
10% weightYoga, gyms, health food, naturopaths, alternative health, farmers markets, outdoor recreation.
Overall score = (Economic × 0.30) + (Demographic × 0.25) + (Social × 0.20) + (Physical × 0.15) + (Wellness × 0.10). The result is the single number reported on each city card.
Feng shui geography overlay
A separate 0–10 score read against four classical site-selection criteria. It is intentionally not folded into the weighted total — it answers a different question. Two cities can share a weighted total of 65 with very different feng shui shapes.
Turtle / Black Tortoise. Protective landform behind the settlement, ideally to the north.
Dragon / Phoenix. River, confluence, or lake in front of (or surrounding) the city.
Tiger / Protection. Natural shelter from prevailing winds — valley, lee of mountains, forest buffer.
Wood-element energy. Parks, agricultural belt, mature canopy, riparian corridors.
Source tiers
Each factor finding is tagged with the strength of the underlying source. This is a transparency hint — not all data is equally provable.
- T2 — Official / Primary. Statistics Canada, BC Stats, CMHC, Environment Canada, WorkBC, municipal budgets.
- T3 — Established journalism / industry. Tourism boards, regional press, MindBody / Yelp inventories, real-estate market reports.
- T4 — Blog / forum / inference. Practitioner websites, anecdotal in-migration reports, qualitative inference where no structured data exists.
What this score is and is not
The score is a summary frame, not a verdict. A 49 is not a bad city; it is a city whose strengths lie outside the framework’s weighting (Regina is the example — economically excellent, physically honest). A 70 is not a perfect city; it is a city that scores well on the questions this instrument happens to ask.
Use it to prompt a question, then read the underlying pillars. The interesting cities are usually the ones whose shape surprises you.