The Performance of British Columbia's Metropolitan Areas on the 3Ts Of
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The performance of British Columbia’s Metropolitan Areas on the 3Ts of Economic Development Benchmarking Project: Creativity Index for British Columbia Dr. Kevin Stolarick Research Director February 2014 Creative BC Benchmarking, February 2014 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4 3Ts Background Information .................................................................................................. 7 The 3Ts and Economic Development ........................................................................................ 9 Technology: Innovation and High-tech Production ............................................................ 9 Measuring Technology ........................................................................................................... 10 Talent: Human Capital and the Creative Class .................................................................. 12 Measuring Talent .................................................................................................................... 12 Tolerance: Openness, Inclusion, and Diversity ................................................................. 15 Measuring Tolerance .............................................................................................................. 17 The “4th T” – Quality of Place ................................................................................................ 18 Conclusions for BC’s Four CMAs ............................................................................................... 19 Overall Creativity Index ......................................................................................................... 19 Vancouver ............................................................................................................................ 19 Victoria ................................................................................................................................. 19 Kelowna .................................................................................................................................. 20 Abbotsford .............................................................................................................................. 20 Overall – Technology ............................................................................................................. 20 Overall – Talent ...................................................................................................................... 20 Overall – Tolerance ................................................................................................................ 21 Overall – Territory Assets/Quality of Place ........................................................................ 21 Vancouver .................................................................................................................................... 21 Overall ...................................................................................................................................... 21 Technology ............................................................................................................................... 22 Talent ........................................................................................................................................ 22 Tolerance ................................................................................................................................. 22 Victoria ......................................................................................................................................... 22 Overall ...................................................................................................................................... 22 Technology ............................................................................................................................... 23 Talent ........................................................................................................................................ 23 Tolerance ................................................................................................................................. 23 Kelowna .......................................................................................................................................... 23 Overall ...................................................................................................................................... 23 Technology ............................................................................................................................... 23 Talent ........................................................................................................................................ 23 Martin Prosperity Institute -- Stolarick (Draft) 2 Creative BC Benchmarking, February 2014 Tolerance ................................................................................................................................. 24 Abbotsford ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Overall ...................................................................................................................................... 24 Technology ............................................................................................................................... 24 Talent ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Tolerance ................................................................................................................................. 25 Appendix A: Metric Definitions for Benchmarking .................................................................. 1 Appendix B: High-Tech Industries - NAICS ............................................................................ 3 Appendix C: Map of Benchmarked Regions ............................................................................. 4 Appendix D: Research Methods ................................................................................................... 5 Statistics ..................................................................................................................................... 6 American Statistical Sourcing ................................................................................................. 7 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Martin Prosperity Institute -- Stolarick (Draft) 3 Creative BC Benchmarking, February 2014 Introduction The Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) has benchmarked the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) of British Columbia against each’s peer regions to understand their competitiveness within North America, with the aim of providing input to the development of a long-term creative economy blueprint for the province. The larger goal is to chart the transition to an economy based on creativity. At a moment when every region is looking for ways to become more competitive, the question is: how does BC stack up? This work is based on work originally completed as part of the “Ontario in the Creative Age" project. The data is based on data from 2006. While available newer data will be provided as part of this larger project, this report is (not by choice) restricted to data captured by the 2006 Canadian Census1. With the transition from the mandatory Census Long Form to the voluntary Household Survey, sufficient, reliable and more recent data is not available to complete this benchmarking. More recent data is available for US metros, but data from 2006 has been used here to keep the comparison consistent. Economic development is driven by what we call the three "T"s – technology, talent, and tolerance. All three are critical to generating sustained economic growth and prosperity. It is great to excel at one or two; however, sustained economic strength comes from performing well on all three. To see how the CMAs fare against competition, we compared them to metropolitan areas with roughly the same population from seventeen US states with a population of six million or more and the three of the most competitive provinces ⎯ Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. (See Appendix C for the map of peer regions.) The map and table below show all of the metropolitan regions of BC. CMAs are in a darker shade than CAs (Census Agglomerations). In 2011, 87.6% of the population of British Columbia lived inside a CMA or CA. Of those 3,854,139 persons, 2,767,965 or 71.8% of all urban dwellers (62.9% of BC’s total population) live in the provinces four CMAs: Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, and Abbotsford – Mission. The number of 1 See Appendix D for more information on our research methods. Martin Prosperity Institute -- Stolarick (Draft) 4 Creative BC Benchmarking, February 2014 persons living outside an urbanized area accounts for 12.4% of the provincial population. Source: MPI. Statistics Canada, 2014. Map by Zara Matheson. Population CMA or CA name Type 2011 2006 % change Vancouver CMA 2,313,328 2,116,581 9.3 Victoria CMA 344,615 330,088 4.4 Kelowna CMA 179,839 162,276 10.8 Abbotsford - Mission CMA 170,191 159,020 7.0 Kamloops CA 98,754 92,797 6.4 Nanaimo CA 98,021 92,361 6.1 Chilliwack CA 92,308