Business travel Gulliver
Liveability ranking
Where the livin' is easiest
Feb 21st 2011, 16:06 by A.B.
VANCOUVER remains the most liveable city in the world, according to the latest annual ranking compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Canadian city scored 98 out of a maximum 100, as it has done for the past two years.
The ranking scores 140 cities from 0-100 on 30 factors spread across five areas: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. These numbers are then weighted and combined to produce an overall figure. The top ten cities occupy the same positions as last year, with the exception of Melbourne and Vienna, which have swapped places.
The report, which some companies use to determine hardship allowances for relocated employees, explains what makes a high-ranked city:
Cities that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. This often fosters a broad range of recreational availability without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Seven of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, where population densities of 2.88 and 3.40 people per sq km respectively compare with a global (land) average of 45.65 and a US average of 32.
At the other end of the ranking, Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, is in 140th place, thanks to particularly poor scores for its stability, health care and infrastructure. Somewhere between the extremes sit London and New York in 53rd and 56th places. They are let down by stability scores of 75 and 70, the result in turn of poor scores for the perceived threat of terror and the rates of petty and violent crime.
UPDATE 23rd February: It turns out Vancouver is only the 29th-best place to live in Canada. Those standards must be pretty high.
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I'm not sure why Boston is not in top 10 list. I have doubts that it is worse off than either Toronto or Calgary on either of the metrics.
I mean, I can see why NY, Chicago or LA are not in top 10 of the list, but Boston?
8 out of 10 cities are predominantly English-speaking.
Ockhams Beard...
You know I debunked that one years ago...
I left Australia 20 years back and people always say
"How could you leave? Don't you miss the weather?"
Its one thing to take a 10 day vacation on the beach in the tropics and enjoy the weather.
Its another thing to spend 6 months backpacking round Australia in the sunshine.
But its entirely another thing altogether to sit in 40C heat in a traffic jam on the Sydney Harbour Bridge day in day out. To be wearing a suit and not shorts. To swelter all day in stinking humidity waiting for a Southerly Buster to bring some relief and it brings golfball sized hail which destroys your car...Yeah vacationing in it and living in it are 2 different things.
Is weather one of the metrics? If not, I wonder whether Australian cities might not nudge ever further up the chart. People pay extraordinary amounts of money to seek out the kind of weather we experience here in Sydney most of the year.
To people wondering why Calgary is ahead Montreal, one word: healthcare.
What kind of livability ranking puts Calgary ahead of Montreal?
I agree Vancouver is the place to live. I have been all over the world & it is the only place I would live. at least May to October. The rest of the year I live in Mexico since rain does not thrill me.
my ignorance shows when i have never heard of Calgary before
As long as you speak francais, Montreal is much nicer to live in than the duller cities of West Canada.
Also, even though Canada and Australia have lower population densities, most of Canada's landmass is frozen wasteland and most of Australia's landmass is scorching desert. Both of them only have a small percentage of land that is liveable (the southern strip of Canada and the coasts of Australia), so that statistic is misleading.
As a former Sydney-sider I'd have to question Melbourne even making the top ten much rather beating out Sydney!
To quote Billy Connelly:
"Its a nice enough place, needs a population transplant though"
Vancouver also scored well in the following categories:
- 100 out of 100 in: "Does it ever stop raining here?".
- 99 out of 100 in: "If I don't get out of this rain, I swear to God I'm gonna lose it".
- 98 out of 100 in: "So, when does summer arrive around here anyway?"
And -
- 97 out of 100 in: "Forget this crap, I'm movin' to Arizona".
I'll give Vancouver to the world, but I'll keep Victoria (Canada) for myself.