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The most livable cities
- rsp1984 4y agoRanking Frankfurt higher than Munich is a joke. I lived in both cities (currently living near Frankfurt) and it's not even close. Infrastructure, cultural and recreational activities, architecture. None of these things are even in the same ballpark.
- rettetdemdativ 4y agoI've also lived in both and Munich is definitely the more expensive of the two and afaik housing affordability is a factor, too. Maybe that played a role.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- www_harka_com 4y agohttps://archive.ph/p7zCF https://archive.ph/p7zCF
- thriftwy 4y agoThere should be some in-built bias, such as adding points for just being in the Northern America. Otherwise it's hard to explain how all of the diverse cities of the USA end up being clumped in one place of the scale. That, or not having sufficient dynamic range.
- dagmx 4y agoWhy would clustering be odd? Culture, industry and other aspects of city life spread outwards. It makes sense that if there's a given city that's very livable, that areas around it similarly benefit and prosper too. This of course assumes no segregation based policies
- manc_lad 4y agoIt would take away the legitimacy of the results if they introduced bias. Asia is more diverse (Sydney, Gujarat, Luang Prabang, Jakarta) and maybe the USA just isn't.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- martindbp 4y ago> how all of the diverse cities of the USA Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse? NYC and SF are a bit different yeah, but other than that they're all remarkably similar. Honestly it's a significant factor in why I decided to move back to Europe. It always bothered me when Americans claim that the US states are as diverse as separate countries in e.g. Europe. No, just no. You are blinded by the fact you've grown up there and are attuned to the small regional differences. There are as large regional differences within individual European countries as there are in the US.
- andsoitis 4y agoLos Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Los Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco. LA has greater concentration of a single dominant ethnic/racial group (Hispanic, 48%) than San Francisco (non-Hispanic White, 40%).
- danenania 4y agoLA should really be compared to the whole Bay Area, not just SF.
- andsoitis 4y agoI used to live on the Peninsula. I think the Bay Area as a whole is pretty bland compared to LA.
- mbg721 4y agoLA is also about 500 square miles to SF's 50, isn't it?
- drstewart 4y ago>There are as large regional differences within individual European countries Have you considered that they're not very large differences and you're just blinded by the fact that you're attuned to them?
- postsantum 4y agoThat bias is called "I have a car and I need to drive everywhere"
- masonic 4y ago> adding points for just being in the Northern America To the contrary, I find it odd that there isn't a single upper-tier livable city in the western 2/3rds of the US but every city in the eastern 95% of Australia is top tier. Hell, my neighbors immigrated from Australia.
- mantas 4y agoDifferent people have different definition of livable. Even same person has different definitions in different stages of life. And frequently people move for bigger money or career opportunities over livability.
- isubasinghe 4y agoI think Australia is very easy to have a good life in thanks to the laid-back culture and government support (healthcare, benefits etc), imo it is a mix of Europe + America. The problem also is the laid-back culture which creates mediocrity in my opinion, the tech scene in Europe, America, Singapore is much better as a result. Depending on priorities its a great place to live, but if you are super passionate about whatever you are doing, it may not be the best place to advance career wise.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- postsantum 4y agoI'm glad Tashkent is finally in Eastern Europe
- altvali 4y agoYes, but of all the cities in Eastern Europe, it's the least livable. Even Baku is better.
- postsantum 4y agoHow about Kabul? It's not that far away
- moltar 4y agoHow can Calgary and Vancouver be next to Vienna and Copenhagen. That list must be rigged.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- frozencell 4y agoProbably because of new events or night life.
- hunglee2 4y agooffice activity is taken as evidence of livability, rather than a consequence of a 'let it rip' pandemic response policy + antediluvian bosses who hate remote
- sascha_sl 4y agoThe fact that there isn't a single dutch city in the top 10, but 3 in car-infested Canada tells me that I have very different standards for "livable".
- bergenty 4y agoI love “car-infested”. Taking public transport and living densely is my version of hell.
- burntoutfire 4y agoI think it's most people's version of hell. Even in Scandinavian countries, well-off people live in houses on a plot of land, not in apartments.
- sascha_sl 4y agoYou don't need to live densely to have public transport and access to services. US city planning (and Canada for the most part) have a problem with either allowing very high density (in limited space, so you get huge towers) or single family homes, very few things in between. I live in a mixed used era, in a 5 story appartment block, which is the high end of density around here. I have two tram lines within 400 meters and an S-Bahn station less than 100m away. And also, dutch cities allow for bikes, if public transport isn't your thing.
- crooked-v 4y agoSee also: US suburbs in the streetcar era, which were built just densely enough that it was practical for everyone to walk to streetcar stops. You can see what's left of that period in some neighborhoods of cities like Boston and San Francisco, where row houses that were once mass-produced to appeal to the middle class have become multi-million-dollar 'luxury' homes almost entirely from the total unavailability of that kind of housing and living style elsewhere. The equivalent mid-density construction is basically nonexistent in new construction today because of exclusionary zoning. It's only recently that some states have started forcibly re-legalizing this sort of thing by overriding local zoning codes, and it will still take decades at best for new construction to really catch up.
- camillomiller 4y agowhat is living well? Why are these lists always so skewed toward such a normative view of liveability? Zürich is a beautiful and well-organized city, for example, but every single time I've been there I've found out that its quiet translates into a boringness I've seldom experienced anywhere else. For me, a man in his late thirties who has no plans to have kids and form a normative family, it's a living nightmare.
- thecopy 4y agoZurich is interesting since on the outside and to a lot of people it seems to be a very boring city indeed. However, in my experience, under the surface there are a lof of cool things happening in Zürich. As well, don't forget that there it has a huge airport with connections to the entire world (only 10 minutes away with S-Bahn btw) and 2 hours train-ride to world-class skiing.
- creativenolo 4y agoYou should be able to have fun anywhere. But seriously, should they be skewed more single 30s guys with no commitments? Should they be skewed towards the things that benefit the majority of people who are not single 30s guys. Saying this as a former 'single guy in his 30s' myself.
- pmkiwi 4y agocreativenolo: former child :)
- DrRobinson 4y agoHe didn't say he was single. One can be a man in his 30s without kids and still not be single, not everyone want to have kids.
- creativenolo 4y agoYour are right - sorry.
- camillomiller 4y ago
- gravelc 4y agoSo Australian, Canadian and some European cities are the places to be. Not overly surprising (at least to me). They're the only 3 regions I'd choose to live and work due to the balanced lifestyle that the Economist rates in its study.
- exitb 4y ago> Other cities affected by the contagion of war, such as Budapest and Warsaw, saw their stability scores slip as geopolitical tensions increased. Meanwhile, kids in American schools are getting shot at, but yeah, Warsaw is definitely less livable than any large US city.
- blfr 4y agoMass shootings are rare but yeah, the only way you could tell that Warsaw is anywhere near a war is because of a large number of Ukrainians and all lower cost rentals gone from the market.
- chrischen 4y agoTo be fair livable probably means the nice parts of the American city. Most American city have nice parts and bad parts, where life in the bad parts can sometimes be as bad as living in a third world. Take Chiraq for example, or even Detroit. Schools have metal detectors to prevent weapons from being brought in, even if there isn’t a risk of mass shooting.
- usrusr 4y agoThird world cities tend to have "nice parts" as well. Chances are they are even nicer, by some metrics.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> Mass shootings are rare Yeah, but... Typical (Median) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015) United States — 0.058 Albania — 0 Austria — 0 Belgium — 0 Czech Republic — 0 Finland — 0 France — 0 Germany — 0 Italy — 0 Macedonia — 0 Netherlands — 0 Norway — 0 Russia — 0 Serbia — 0 Slovakia — 0 Switzerland — 0 United Kingdom — 0 Using the median analysis, the United States is the only country examined that shows a propensity for mass shootings. The data itself supports this interpretation, as the United States endured mass shooting events all seven years, but the other countries all experienced mass shootings during only one or two years. Thus, in a typical year, most countries experience zero mass shooting deaths, while the US experiences at least a few. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shoo...
- Loic 4y agoAs I wrote last year, these liveability index ignores all the best cities in Europe and I suppose in most countries by focusing on the largest cities. I enjoyed living in the US, France, Denmark and Germany, I can't find Boulder, Besançon, Nantes, Helsingor, Münster, etc. These are all smaller cities outside of the big ones and they would all have a score higher than Vienna in this index. I am 100% confident that you can find in your country a lot of incredibly nice cities to live in. This article should be titled "The most livable big cities".
- zfxfr 4y agoI was going to share the same observation. Also I am impressed someone mention Besançon on HN. I live nearby ! In Vesoul which is also a really good place to live ! And I say it after living all around Europe and asia.
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- jiggawatts 4y agoThese lists also often ignore the weather, which makes a huge difference to what most people consider to be "livable". Nordic European winters are horrible, and no amount of amenities can compensate.
- xadhominemx 4y agoEurope in general is quite gloomy
- qsort 4y agoEurope is a big place; fjords have little to share with Algarve or Greek isles as far as climate goes.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
- loycombinate 4y agoHaha most livable if you’re a white German speaking European
- sirwitti 4y agoWhat makes you say that?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DeathArrow 4y ago
- tut-urut-utut 4y agoWrong. German is a nationality, not an ethnicity, except if you take an opinion of a few far right borderline Nazi German parties.
- DeathArrow 4y agoYou are confusing Europe with the US, Canada and Australia. Being German is akin to being Maori or Aboriginal.
- bildung 4y agoI think you mistook German for Germanic. German means citizenship in Germany, Germanics were peoples living in central Europe and Scandinavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples
- someone_else12 4y agoGerman is also ethnicity, as I mentioned above, there are Germans e.g. in Kazakhstan and other countries, who are not German citizens.
- blowski 4y agoWith its colourful graphs and precise numbers, this all sounds very scientific. In reality, I'm guessing a group of people listed where they think is lovely to live and that's what we're now discussing.
- notahacker 4y agoI think it's more a bunch of fresh graduates who've never been to most of the cities on the list looked at some data points (and then after realising they were mostly the same as last year's data points did a few news searches to find some points of difference)
- frozencell 4y agoNo, in reality you have to pay a few thousands bucks to read the full data report (there are links in the pdf).
- usrusr 4y agoIt's mentioned in the text: the metric wasn't designed to declare a winner, it was designed to give organisations who need to deploy employees abroad an idea about how much compensation might be adequate for moving there. The blue ones would all fall into the "good enough" category.
- jonasmst 4y agoIt might be rendered poorly at my end, but what's the idea behind the first chart? I'm not able to make sense of it. It seems to present the same thing (city liveability index) three times, and all the cities are just thrown on there in no particular order. Honolulu is even off the charts, which indicates that there's some intention of an axis somewhere, but I can't tell what it is. Edit: Ah, it was missing a world map rendered in the background. Now it makes sense.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nonrandomstring 4y agoSome factors rapidly changing in UK cities are - Empty offices since the pandemic - Disappearance of the high-street due to Amazon - New "In-between" builds Most British cities still have empty or skeleton-crewed office buildings. That can't be sustainable. Surely these will be sold off as housing. Shops are vanishing at a terrifying rate. Some city centres are boarded up and only charity shops, Tesco minimarts and tattoo/nail bars remain. Every tiny plot of land is being sold off to developers to "fill in" with profitable (but in my reckoning totally unneeded) housing. This is changing public footpaths and cycle cut-throughs and squeezing the density of some areas. I think any metric of "livability" would be in flux and likely to change in many British cities.
- fumblebee 4y ago> Disappearance of the high-street due to Amazon My own anectdata, but I've made the opposite observation. At least in my hometown (~10k population), I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. While several years ago, I would order relentlessly from the likes of Amazon, I've found myself purchasing local goods in local stores far more, and am better off for it.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. That's awesome. To qualify my comments, I've also seen some of that change. New shops I've noticed filling in are - a bike repair shop - a "slow living" craft shop - a tailors/upholsterer - a fishmonger (haven't had one for 20+ years around here) But in my town (city >300k) the decline has been significant with large chains, banks, clothing and brand retail shuttering up. I do my best to support local trade and petit commerce. The ability to use cash and just browse in spare time is a factor.
- 4y ago
- pmkiwi 4y agoSo Auckland dropped 33 places just because of few Covid cases ? It is true that we had a peak of Covid cases this year, but it was never really massive by international standards. At the same time, Auckland is pretty dead for a while now, especially the CBD. Traffic is not that bad, but we haven't recovered at all from Covid. We will see in the next few months if cruise ships and tourists are back or not.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoAuckland is lovely - if you can afford to live there.
- pmkiwi 4y agoNZ is not cheap indeed and Auckland is insanely expensive (managed to buy despite the crazy housing market), but nice beaches and awesome for sailing !
- EdwardDiego 4y agoYeah, I was really surprised by how nice the beaches are in Auckland when I first travelled up there. I had thought, given how many people live around them and use them, that the beaches would be crowded, or ruined with litter, but nothing of the sort. And the water is so much warmer than our South Island beaches.
- pmkiwi 4y agoSome of the central beaches are sometimes crowded, but many beaches are just empty. Went for a swim today and water was fresh (16 degrees) but refreshing ! Where are you based ?
- EdwardDiego 4y agoOtautahi-ish
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoFrom personal experience, Vienna tops the list of places to go see the locals doing the old 1930's style stiff arm salute. If described in terms of cake, as it probably should be, Vienna is a layered sponge cake, two thick wedges of art and culture sandwiching a smaller middle layer of right-wing reactionary local politics.
- DeathArrow 4y agoI haven't seen what are the criteria for livability. I am not aware of the process used to apply those criteria. I am not aware of the credentials of the people/company who made the top. So I don't care about such a top.
- fumblebee 4y agoAnyone else notice that the text labels on the image "Vienna waits for you" aren't embedded as part of the image itself, but rather distinct divs overlaid, meaning you can highlight/copy/etc. the text. Is this common? / any ideas on why they've done it this way? It's cool, but surely adds unnecessary complexity and require testing to ensure it displays as expected on different devices.
- bschne 4y agoFrom the code it looks like they used this: http://ai2html.org http://ai2html.org The FAQ on the front page provides a hint as to why this might be superior to just using an SVG or PNG.
- jaimex2 4y agoMelbourne is the world's most leavable city. Honest mistake on their part. I think the exodus count is over 50,000 so far.
- leto_ii 4y agoFirst of all, I'm not sure who this index is supposed to help. The EIU puts a new version out every year, but keeps pretty much all of it paywalled - I can't imagine who would be willing to pay a few hundred euros to find out that Western Europe is a nice place to live in. Secondly, it's funny to see how variable the scores are from one year to the next - with rare exceptions (e.g. Kiev right now) cities don't really change that much in the short term. A few other small observations: 1. It's absolutely comical that Frankfurt ranks 7th. I know the city quite well, it shouldn't crack the top 50 in any vaguely sane ranking. 2. It's also plainly weird that Istanbul is Western Europe but Budapest is Eastern Europe, together with Tashkent, which is comfortably to the East of all of Iran. 3. Why no breakdown for Southern Europe/the Mediterranean? Year after year when going over these rankings I'm left with the same impression - arbitrary tastes and cultural flexing + some basic common sense observations, all masquerading as science.
- usrusr 4y agoSay you run a company offering the building of some novel power distribution facility, globally. Part of your offer is a team of specialists deployed at the site for the first five years, then the kinks are out and local staff has enough experience. This week is funny, seems to be D week. Because through some coincidence the cities asking for a quotation are Dhaka, Denver, Dublin and Douala. On your third international project you learned the hard way that scaling compensation for the team on site by cost of living might work fine in Zurich, but not for a cheap country permanently skirting the threshold to civil war. The company started by that on-site team after resigning mid-deployment likely has the same "D" quotation inquiries this week. That's would be an example of the target audience EIU is selling the index to. Not a pat on the back for the nicest place, but a meaningfully closer to objective estimate of how much will our employees hate us if we deploy them there. Easily worth a few hundred dollars.
- leto_ii 4y ago> Not a pat on the back for the nicest place, but a meaningfully closer to objective estimate of how much will our employees hate us if we deploy them there Perhaps, although I imagine that IRL this kind of research might be bought as part of a much bigger research effort. Maybe just to have it and say that you checked some "objective" source before making a decision.
- throwaway4good 4y agoHeavily biased towards costal US / Western European cities; ignoring the changes in liveability that takes place elsewhere (Asia, Eastern Europe, mid-sized cities of the west).
- nus07 4y agoList for upper middle class white folks created by upper middle class white folks .
- torginus 4y agoI am sorry this article is terrible - it's at best a reflection of views of the Economists journalists idea of what the y consider 'liveability' - which they don't feel like sharing with us anyway. At worst, this is an infomercial for the data components they gathered, which they use to come up with these aggregate stats.
- timbit42 4y agoThey didn't share it because they charge a fee for the full report.
- mherrmann 4y agoI'm from and live in Vienna. It truly is a great city to live in. Feel free to AMA.
- lbrito 4y agoHow's the receptivity to foreign immigrants of, um, darker complexion and that speak only English and a second European language that is not German? Also, how are public pensions? Do people expect to go by with that 30 year from now, or do people usually have a backup plan/private insurance
- mherrmann 4y agoIn my second-hand experience, foreigners that do not speak German well are unfortunately sometimes not received friendly by government and other public staff. I don't know anybody with a darker complexion closely enough to comment on how they are treated. My suspicion is that they would feel a little like they stand out, and then depending on their German will be treated a little bit worse on average. (Sad but my best guess.) Educated young people don't believe in pensions but usually also don't have a backup plan. People 45+ expect to receive a pension.
- dzogchen 4y agoThis list is a complete joke, evidenced by the fact that they use a definition of livibility that puts cities that are barely walkable in the top 10.
- AndrewUnmuted 4y agoWhether or not a city is "walkable," is not necessarily an improvement upon livability. In areas of Chicago and Baltimore, for example, the streets are "walkable," however the frequent violent & property crimes that take place in these areas make a casual stroll down the block an unsafe proposition. I grew up in Harlem during the time it was emerging out of the 1980s crack epidemic. As a child, the streets were easy to walk on and crime did not impact this for me in any real way. Just a few years prior, though, this was definitely not the case. And even today, as "walkability" improvements have been made in Harlem, the streets are quite obviously less walker-friendly, since walking down the street exposes you to a non-insignificant risk of being a random psychopath's next unwitting victim. My suspicion here is that you have some sort of binary thought process surrounding cars in cities. The fact is that cities are not as livable in general. Any solution involving more or better walking capacity is a temporary fix at best. In actuality, what you need is a very solid city planner who is able to anticipate and respond to cultural trends adequately. Cities need to be able to balance the needs of various transit options, such that they don't compound peoples' other problems that come from living in cities: crime, cleanliness, affordability, etc.
- stormbrew 4y ago"Walkability" on things like this doesn't mean that there are sidewalks you can take a stroll down, it means that essential and desireable services (like grocery stores and restaurants) are within walking distance of most residences, and there's transit service that makes up for what lacks. If it was just about "can you go for a walk" twisty-turny suburbs would get the highest imaginable walkability score, because you can get lost in those for hours and never see a car. Or any other useful destination, for that matter.
- justinpowers 4y agoMost “walkability” scores either directly or indirectly account for crime. For instance, residents rate walkability and are specifically asked to consider crime and safety. Or, conversely, walkability is measured based on the number of actual walkers and the number of walk-accessible amenities in a given area. High crime areas would naturally have fewer walkers and fewer amenities. I can’t speak to Baltimore, but in Chicago, crime and scarcity of amenities go hand-in-hand. I can’t think of a single pedestrian-focused area that has both amenities and a significant crime problem (one must understand that Chicago crime is not nearly as prevalent or evenly dispersed as the media and non-Chicagoans enjoy imagining).
- MrYellowP 4y agoI'm from Vienna. Don't believe it. You're welcome!
- lbrito 4y agoPlease elaborate
- frozencell 4y agohttps://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vienna-is-the-new-havana-syndrome-hotspot https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vienna-is-the-new-h...
- MrYellowP 4y agoThere's nothing to elaborate. I live here. It's nice to live in, unless you live in a district where you rather not. Anyone claiming those don't exist is just sitting in his tiny bubble.
- lbrito 4y agoAffordability doesn't seem to count in this list. On average housing expenses (rent or mortgage) are around 60% of income in Vancouver metro. I won't even get into weather: the first few days of blue skies just started this week after a year of bleak gray-on-blue. Depressing is an understatement.
- enw 4y agoAnd health care in Canada is a joke. Unless you have terminal cancer or close to death, good luck getting any specialist’s attention. You’ll wait for a year on a waitlist for someone to care. Doesn’t matter if you have money either, no way around it.
- lbrito 4y agoThe system has serious issues, but I think you're being a bit too harsh. Trust me - I come from a country with a barely functioning single payer system, so my dynamic range here is pretty good. Family doctor crisis is real, there are absurdly long wait times and people suffer as a result. But some things are also top notch. My wife just had our first son a few weeks ago and everything was really good - and parts of the process that were free would be very expensive in other places.
- enw 4y agoIt’s relative. I’ve been in countries where the care is both top-notch, and you can get specialist attention and full-body checkups in a matter of days.
- gautamcgoel 4y agoWhich places?
- tverbeure 4y agoNot the person you're replying to, but: Belgium. I haven't lived there for more than 20 years, but until 2000, one of their big issues were medical overconsumption. As in: there were too many doctors and specialists, and it was considered too easy to get medical attention. But for those who needed it, it was fantastic. And the quality of care that I experienced there was on par or better with what I get in the US. I don't think much has changed. I just went back, had a very minor medical issue, and within 2 hours after making my first call, I had see a primary care physician, who wasn't 100% sure, so she called in the specialist next door as well.
- rdl 4y ago"The war in Ukraine is also weighing on liveability. There is no score in 2022 for Kyiv because the eiu’s correspondent had to abandon the survey when fighting broke out"
- 4cao 4y agoPDF document with some more details (but still not the whole list): https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/liveability-index-2022.pdf https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/liveability-inde... (Need to provide an e-mail address to get the above link.)
- frozencell 4y agoThe complete list seems paid though (75 to $10,000). [0] https://store.eiu.com/product/global-liveability-survey/ https://store.eiu.com/product/global-liveability-survey/
- stormbrew 4y agoAs someone who lives nearby and is even pretty happy with living here most of the time, let me tell you that Calgary being third on this list is comically absurd. It's an ok city in many ways, but approximately the only way it's a better city than the other two canadian cities on the list is that average income is fairly high (for now) in Alberta, and especially in oil company boardrooms in Calgary, again because of a resurgent oil boom due to the russian invasion of ukraine.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago"... according to one magazine"
- groby_b 4y agoAs a German: Any "livability" classification of cities that has Frankfurt in the top 10 has definitely some issues. It's a place to pass through, at best.
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- jonstewart 4y agoMy connecting flight to my vacation destination in Italy was canceled this morning, so I got to spend the afternoon in Vienna with my wife and kids. Strudel and einspanner at Cafe Mozart, brats from a wurst stand, the CAT train, Stephensplatz, it was all a good reminder why Vienna is such a great city.
- joushx 4y agoThe CAT train is a scam. It costs much more than a Railjet that takes the same time and you end up at the central station.
- ttkari 4y agoThey think Istanbul is in Western Europe while Budapest is in Eastern Europe, I'm not entirely convinced that rest of their report is worth reading.
- Barrin92 4y agoThis list seems awful. How is Istanbul ranked this low? Almost all Chinese cities seem incredibly underrated, Beijing and Shanghai on a level with Athens, some of the top 'second tier' cities on par with Latin American cities? Dubai and Abu Dhabi as 'livable', not for the workers there, that's for sure. If you wanted to put a positive spin on it you can say the Economist knows its readership very well.
- VoxelBoy 4y agoHave you ever lived in Istanbul? I've lived there for more than 20 years and I'm not surprised that it is ranked low. Terrible traffic (which makes people angry overall), huge sprawl and population, lots and lots of other problems.
- Barrin92 4y agoYep I have and it were some of the most fun times of my life. Every 10 million pop. city has terrible traffic and problems, including those high on that list, and all of their residents think they suck in some sense. But unlike a lot of the high income expat enclaves the Economist chose to put up in the rankings Istanbul also has genuine culture. It's the most actually cosmopolitan city in the world as far as I'm concerned.
- panaceaeaea 4y agoDoes anyone have access to the full list? Curious whether SF went down from 2021 and also how San Jose ranks