Archived Articles

Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

Global Real Estate Project
News Index

Directories
  Int'l Realty
  US Realty

The Board of Trade of Montreal has published results of a study, comparing 12 big urban areas in North America (7 in the United States and 5 in Canada) according to their quality of life, economic potential for grown, attractiveness for investors, level of education, and lots more. Among them only Montreal with its French-speaking majority is officially predominantly non-English speaking area. Interesting phenomenon is that the quality of life isn't still a predominant factor determining the business investment plans. According to this study, there is no casual links between the way people feel and the way the investors act. If the opposite was the case, cities like Montreal and Vancouver could have been much more interesting for the business circles than Atlanta and Boston.

Another interesting aspect of the study is the gap between the real situation in different cities and the perception about this situation. Cities that are perceived as having relatively more educated population in fact stand on the bottom of the list. Others that are perceived as not attracting enough investors' interest in reality are rated on the top among the international business centers. Looking as yet another paradox is that some cities that are rated very well in developing high tech industries and services in fact don't score well in producing enough graduates. Cities that are perceived as having different economic standard of life like Montreal and Toronto in fact are too close to call. Other cities that are famous of being very secure, if we look closely to the statistics, lie behind some other areas that are more notorious for their criminals.

There are at least 3 weak points in this study, which need to be mentioned. First, 12 cities which represent no area west of Chicago and south of Seattle can't obviously be representative for North America. Next time it would be interesting to see how these cities compete with the big urban areas of California and Texas. Second, it will be useful to make clusters of cities from one business region, comparing apples with apples, e.g. within North East, Mid-West, Pacific Coast, Prairies. Each of these regions has different economic history and its unique business cycles. Third, it's absolutely necessary to establish verifiable scale showing the relative strength of each variable, not just comparing cities according to each or several of them. What makes for example the air quality an independent variable instead of water quality, and why the air quality has exactly this and no bigger or lesser significance.

Notwithstanding these problems, which we expect to be solved in the next study, it offers a food for further analysis and useful information for prospective investors.

--------------------

See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of North America.