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Ironically, this Canadian city has been voted the best place for Gen Z to live in Canada
In a finding that may surprise Canadians who ascribe to the view that the nation’s capital is boring, Ottawa has been deemed the best place in Canada for under-30s who are looking for a place to live.
A global survey by financial services firm Remitly put Ottawa in eighth place worldwide — and first in Canada — for new residents in Generation Z. Canada’s capital was the only Canadian city in the top 10 .
Ottawa doesn’t often get this type of attention. In 2024 it was ranked as one of Canada’s “most boring cities” on the Ontario Bets website, and in 2013 it beat four other cities to win “the most boring city in Canada” title at the Boring Awards, the Huffington Post reported at the time.
Things got to the point where the city in 2024 hired a “night mayor” to make things more interesting. Mathieu Grondin’s LinkedIn profile describes him as “First Nightlife Commissioner in Canada.”
Maybe it’s working. Ottawa beat out other Canadian cities that made the list, including Calgary (21st), Halifax (22nd), Montreal (28th), Edmonton (35th), Toronto (39th), Vancouver (43rd) and Victoria (49th). With a total of eight cities in the top 50, Canada had more than any other country except the United States, which had 14, beginning with Pittsburgh in sixth place.
The firm ranked 250 cities worldwide on nine categories with a possible score of 100. Ottawa scored 68.77. First-place Copenhagen, Denmark, scored 76.67. Three of the top 10 cities were in the Netherlands, and seven of the top 10 were in Europe.
In each category, the highest-performing city received the maximum score and all others were ranked proportionally against that benchmark. The categories included rent affordability, youth unemployment rate, safety index, LGBTQ+ equality, broadband download speed, affordability of a night out, quality of life index and average monthly net salary.
In addition, the percentage of the population aged 20–29 (the upper range of the Gen Z cohort) was scored for a sense of the city’s social scene.
Ottawa’s affordability of a night out was beaten only by Calgary and Halifax among the other Canadian cities on the list, but it trumped all others in its quality of life and safety scores. Its percentage of twentysomething residents at 14.09 per cent was in the middle of the pack for Canadian cities, which ranged from 12.76 to 15.91 per cent.
“Toronto usually gets all the attention, but Ottawa is a Canadian city worth considering for youngsters looking to relocate to North America,” Remitly wrote in its report.
“Canada’s capital scored impressively on safety (68.4 — the highest out of any Canadian city analyzed), LGBTQ+ equality (79/100, one of the highest in the study), and affordability of a night out, especially compared to Canadian cities like Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.”
It added: “Average monthly salaries of around $5,500 CAD and a youth unemployment rate of 13.8 per cent reflect a city with a stable economy that offers predictability even if it lacks the startup energy of Vancouver or Toronto. It may not top any single category, but Ottawa’s reliability across the board is what earns it a place in the global top 10.”
Remitly used Canada’s national unemployment rate for youth in all its calculations, though the overall rate is about half that. Also, its average net salary suggests a gross income of about $90,000 a year. The website careerbeacon.com estimates an average wage in Ottawa to be closer to $64,000, which might not leave much for a Gen Z renter to save for a home after other expenses had been met.
The top 10 list: Copenhagen, Denmark; Bern, Switzerland; Groningen, Netherlands; Bergen, Norway; Eindhoven, Netherlands; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Utrecht, Netherlands; Ottawa, Canada; Trondheim, Norway; and Wellington, New Zealand.
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