Geography faculty member Gilles Viaud with some of Kamloops behind him. He is in the process of creating a new tool to help smaller cities better assess the quality of life provided to residents.
So often, quality of life indicators are designed for use in large urban centres with the results being used to rank one city against another.
When applied to small cities many of those indicators become irrelevant so for the past several years Gilles Viaud (Geography) has been quietly working to establish ‘quality of place’ indicators that work for small cities; his system and results are nearly complete.
Viaud is working in cooperation with the Thompson Nicola Cariboo United Way, and expects his research will help the non-profit organization better assess community assets, social and economic trends and provide a fact-based resource for future community involvement. He will deliver a preliminary report — Quality of Place Analysis: Kamloops 1996-2011— next month, with a full report expected in summer 2015.
