SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Yellowknife jumped 25 spots to become the 23rd best place to live in Canada, according to a recent MoneySense magazine survey.

MoneySense magazine said in a recent survey report that Yellowknife is the Canadian city with the highest percentage of its population walking or biking to work. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

The magazine ranked 179 Canadian municipalities with a population exceeding 10,000 people based on a number of factors, including income, unemployment, crime rates and climate.

Yellowknife earned 61.6 points out of 105, enough for the 23rd spot in the survey, which was published in the magazine's latest issue. The city ranked 48 out of 154 municipalities last year.

"It is a very dramatic increase," said Yellowknife Mayor Gord Van Tighem.

"It now, sort of, behoves people to take a look at how we got there and maybe take a more positive stance on where we're going from here."

Managing editor Sarah Efron said the city ranked high in terms of average household and discretionary incomes but performed poorly in terms of crime rate.

"I think what really propelled Yellowknife up the list this year was it had a relatively lower unemployment rate than other cities," she said.

"We saw a lot of cities have employment problems. They dropped down on the list and that pushed Yellowknife up."

Yellowknife is also the Canadian city with the highest percentage of its population walking or biking to work, said Efron.

"I guess it means proportionally, a lot of people live close enough to their places of employment that they can walk," she said.

"We wouldn't expect a Northern city to have such a large proportion of the population walking or biking. I would think that if it was minus 25, I wouldn't expect people to be walking to work but that seems to be the case according to our data."

Van Tighem said the city always ranked high in terms of cycling, walking and alternative methods of transportation.

"It has been a concerted effort over the last several years to put in more trails, put in more pedestrian-friendly and hopefully a little bit more bicycle-friendly (areas) as we move forward. We're not quite there yet." he said.

The magazine analyzed data from Statistics Canada, Environment Canada and various databases to come up with the ranking, said Efron.

"It's a good way for cities and municipalities to measure where they're doing and look for areas where they're not doing so well," she said.

Earlier this year, Corporate Knights magazine named Yellowknife the most sustainable small city in Canada for the third year in a row. And last year, a University of Toronto business professor ranked Yellowknife fourth best city for mid-career people and fifth for singles and families, but failed to make the top 10 for empty-nesters or retirees.