Methodology
How we score neighbourhoods.
Vicinus publishes a 0–100 livability score for every neighbourhood it covers, currently across Metro Vancouver. This section documents exactly how those numbers are produced, what data goes into them, and — just as importantly — what they do not measure.
We publish this because a score you cannot audit is a score you should not trust when deciding where to live.
Weights version v1
The methodologies
Livability score
The 0–100 composite shown on every neighbourhood page: the four sub-indices, the weights, how missing data is handled, and how the “Top X%” percentile is ranked.
Walkability score
The largest single input into livability: distance-decayed, variety-weighted access to nine categories of everyday destination, computed from OpenStreetMap.
Principles
Four commitments constrain every scoring decision we make. They are what the detail pages are an expansion of.
- Deterministic, not generative. Every score is arithmetic over open data. No model and no language model produces or adjusts a score. Where AI is involved at all, it re-weights and explains scores that were already computed — it never invents one.
- Reproducible. Each score is stored alongside the weights version and the dated data snapshot it was computed from, so any published number can be recomputed against the exact inputs that produced it.
- Absent data stays absent. Where we lack data we record nothing, rather than recording a zero. A failed data fetch and a genuinely empty neighbourhood are not the same fact, and conflating them would quietly distort every comparison.
- Access, not quality. We score what is verifiably near a place. We do not rate schools, rank institutions, or infer the character of a community from its amenities.
Where the data comes from
Every input is open data. No score on Vicinus is derived from property listing data, and no listing data is used to rank a neighbourhood.
| Input | Source | Refresh |
|---|---|---|
| Points of interest | OpenStreetMap, via the Overpass API | Quarterly snapshot |
| Schools (locations only) | OpenStreetMap | Quarterly snapshot |
| Transit service levels | Published agency GTFS feeds | On feed update |
What these scores are not
A livability score is a summary of measurable proximity. It is not a recommendation, a valuation input, or a judgement about the people who live somewhere.
- It does not measure safety, affordability, air quality, noise, community, or how pleasant a place feels to be in.
- It does not measure school quality. The schools sub-index reflects proximity and level coverage only.
- It is not a property valuation and has no bearing on the price or condition of any individual home.
- It is computed from a single point per neighbourhood, so it describes a neighbourhood in aggregate, never a specific address.
Data attribution
Points of interest are derived from OpenStreetMap. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Data is queried through the Overpass API.
Transit service levels are derived from published GTFS feeds. Metro Vancouver service data is © South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority (TransLink), used under the terms of its open data licence. Where other agency feeds are used, the same attribution applies to the publishing agency. Vicinus is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any transit agency, and neither agency is responsible for the scores derived from its data.
School locations come from OpenStreetMap and reflect where schools are, not how they perform. Vicinus does not publish, license, or rank school quality data.