I live on the cusp of Westminster, Cypress and Stanton -- I would have trouble just moving away from the Katella Deli!
I know what ya mean, Boss, i have trouble pushin' away from the dinner table . . .
I know it's been awhile since patiodog lived in the area and Katella Deli was likely in the older location by the 605 Fwy. on Seal Beach Blvd. & Katella. It's now in a huge new location near the golf course where Tiger Woods practiced as a child and the Los Alamitos Race Track.
Actually, I never lived south of the Monterey Bay. The patiobitch's unfortunate grandmother lives in a tralier park in Westminster (within view of the whale blimp, if you've any idea what I'm talking about). I was making fun, but if there's something worth having around there, more power to it! (Old Madge only goes to Speiers... ugh.)
I would really love to see the livability criteria, particularly for the best cities. NYC near the top?! I can see re the cultural stuff, but it's pretty hard to get around much of it, and yes, while you can get Thai at 2 AM, you often can't find practical stuff like basic hardware or kitchen staples unless you do some traveling. Plus, many of the schools are lousy and there are pollution issues.
Interesting that all 10 of the least-livable countries are in Africa. While I was putting together the tourism links for Africa, some of my searches led straight to US Government warnings about countries (I believe Chad and Burkina Faso were two of them, and they are two of the bottom 10 on your list). Sad, very sad.
Anybody see a review for Paul Theroux's new book about Africa. He says something about no matter what we do to help, the only way Africa can be helped is by Africans. An interesting commentary. I didn't realize he taught school there 40 years ago. I guess I just thought he was a dilletante.
He did some work at a leper colony there, which was, I think, separate from his Peace Corps stint. His piece on it is included in a Granta publication on Africa. Taught in Singapore for a while, too. An odd writer, that one. Can't stand his novels, but I love his travel books. Doesn't write about too many places that rate very high on the livability list. (Doesn't seem to think too highly of Oz, either.)
I have never been able to get more than a few pages into his novels, but I like his travelogues too. The one about Britain is wonderful; circum-ambulating a small island and naming the folks he sees. Great stuff.
I figured you were being glib, but it is difficult to tell where Westminster ends and Huntington Beach begins (they abut one another). I'm centrally located to be able to quickly get to L.A. if I have a job there and down the South Orange Coast as a lot of my clientele is there. I know vaguely where your Mom lives.
Jespah -- I did provide a link to examine Melbourne's credentials and I would imagine EIU is stressing economic considerations but they obviously can't ignore the importance of education, crime levels, health care. If one stops and thinks about what other surveys show regarding the U.S. position against the rest of the world on those three criteria, can our economic strengths pull us up to the top of those lists? Sure makes me aware that puffing up our chests and shouting to the world how great we are is looking more like empty rhetoric. The ability to defend ourselves because of our military machine and stockpile of nuclear weapons -- how much of a factor is that in making a country or city more livable?
Are we a great country in spite of our government, not because of it? Only questions to ponder.
Interesting. Well, if we go with health care, are we near the top, or not? After all, we have wonderful doctors and facilities, but so many people are uninsured, or their insurance is by happenstance (membership in some organization, being married to a person with benefits, etc.). Is the possibility of great health care, or the reality of being able to afford it?
Education - we have a lot of places here to be educated, of varying strengths and weaknesses and varying foci. Which is better - lots of places to potentially be educated, or the ability to afford said education, or have the time to get educated?
Crime - I imagine having a lot of police isn't a criterion for being livable. Otherwise, police states would rank rather highly. But this is the current debate about freedom versus security. Which makes a place more livable - knowing an attacker will be locked up or executed, or knowing you have the right to peaceably assemble, and mostly go where you choose, not subject to a curfew or other restrictions?
Because all three are in the news as far as government intervention and new legislation, I searched for health over the Internet and this site capsulized what I already knew from my reading over the past few years. We do have the most expensive health care which can be argued that we have more citizens who can afford it but overall, we don't look that good:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-healthcare.htm
Someone want to find internet sites on the status of the U.S. in crime and education?
From what I can gleem from the WWW it appears that there are quite a few factors that were consoidered in the cities list. One of the items in particular that I noted is transportation. Again, the survey only looks at the "city" as being within the city limits, not it's metro area or suburbs. In transportation credit was given for airports and the number of destinations you can reach directly as well as subway systems, etc.. A higher number of interconnecting highways was considered a detractor.
That criteria puts cities like Dallas and Chicago at a distinct disadvantage to cities like NY, Boston and Washington DC since neither Dallas or Chicago has airports within city limits. The newer cities like Dallas that are more spread out get hit again because of the way they were built it makes subway systems a non-player and people rely more on the interconnecting highways.
The survey seems to push highly concentrated urban centers as the desired state. One site I found credits the airport rating alone as the reason Singapore scored as high as it did.
Light, You just made me realize that my travel days aren't over quite yet! I've been to only 26 out of the 130 on your list. sigh.....
c.i.
I guess for visiting cities, CI, the surveys would give one some clues as to which ones they might enjoy and it is important which ones are primarilly safe cities to visit. I know Craven would tell you that Rio de Janeiro is not a safe city to visit -- always stay close to the hotel and don't wander around 'cause your odds of getting robbed are not in your favor. Some might say that about NYC, however, and it's high on the list of cities.
fishin' -- I can see your research applying to the most livable U.S. cities but since San Francisco and New York are the only one high on the list, it would be good to start a discussion on the survey in the U.S. only. I haven't looked for that list, just ran across references to it which I noted -- Long Beach, California.
(Wish I could find the middle of the livable cities list but EIU doesn't publish that itself -- it may have been in an issue of The Economist).
BTW, fishin', transporation in the L.A. area basically sucks. You either get out in an automobile to fight the daily traffic jams or plan on having a home office. Orange County isn't as bad but the last twenty years has been slow growing the the potential financial center of Costa Mesa (near one of the most thriving malls in America). Thirty years ago, OC/Costa Mesa was suppose to have been the financial center of Southern California. The bankruptcy didn't help -- another case of shady brokers taking a big investor (the County) to the cleaners.
I provided a link some number of pages back that had the entire list of the 130 cities reviewed LW! NY and SF aren't the only US cities to score high on it either. They actually come in below most of the other US cities listed.
I'm famaliar with LA traffic! lol During the 1996 election campaign I spent quite a bit of time with Jack Kemp down at his brother's house in Laguna Beach and running all over South LA and Orange County.
One of the items in the Transportation arena that CA did get credit for was the "BART" system. (???) I'm not famaliar with it but I saw it mentioned several times as a "kudo".
This is the text of the article I linked to back on page 12 of this thread:
"Friday, October 4, 2002 Posted: 7:27 AM EDT (1127 GMT) Melbourne, Vancouver top city list LONDON, England (CNN) -- Melbourne and Vancouver are the best cities in the world for expatriates to live in, according to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Both Australia and Canada fared well in the survey, with the west Australian city of Perth ranking third, and Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide tying in eighth place. Toronto and Montreal also made the top 10, while Calgary was 16th. (Full list) Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea came in last place, while the European Union was considered the best region to live just ahead of North America. Conducted by the London-based EIU -- the business information arm of the Economist Group -- the survey assessed the level of hardship for expatriates in 130 cities. It looked at 12 factors including housing, education, recreational activities and climate, rating every city on a five-point scale in each category, with five indicating extreme hardship. Melbourne weather, notorious for providing four seasons in a single day was all that prevented it from receiving a perfect score of zero. Port Moresby On the other end of the scale, Port Moresby managed a hardship score of 80. There, expatriates "must take extreme security precautions ... Education and health indicators are poor, corruption is rife and high humidity makes the climate oppressive all year round," the report said. Rounding out the top ten cities were Vienna, Geneva and Zurich (all equal fourth) while Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Oslo were also equal eighth. The Japanese cities of Osaka and Tokyo were the highest rated in Asia in equal 21st spot. Next best was Hong Kong in 44th place. The most livable mainland Chinese cities were Guangzhou and Shanghai at equal 73rd. London was also rated 44th while Honolulu was the preferred U.S. city in equal 21st place. New York was ranked 52nd. Middle East Vancouver, home to around 2 million, and equal best city in the world Regionally, the highest hardship was found in Africa and the Middle East, the report found. The European Union was the least affected by hardship, but North America was also "a good place to live." "Despite the increased fear of terrorism and high levels of violent crime in some cities, the United States and Canada have fairly low hardship ratings thanks to a highly developed infrastructure, good education and health indicators and the widespread availability of recreational activities," the survey said. The EIU report found a clear gap between west and east European cities, while hardship in Asia and Australasia also was grouped in two extremes. Compared with the low hardship ratings in Australia and also parts of Asia, the region was home to cities where expatriates encountered severe hardship, the survey found. The Pakistani port city of Karachi received the second highest hardship rating of 74, the Indian cities of New Delhi and Mumbai scored 62 and 57 respectively, while the Indonesian capital Jakarta polled a high 56 coming in 119th place. Elsewhere in Asia, Bangkok scored 45, Manila 47, Colombo 52, Hanoi 54, Ho Chi Minh 55, Phnom Penh 70 and Dhaka 71.
The list in full:
1. (tie) Melbourne, Australia
1. Vancouver, Canada
3. Perth, Australia
4. (tie) Vienna, Austria
4. Toronto, Canada
4. Geneva, Switzerland
4. Zurich, Switzerland
8. (tie) Adelaide, Australia
8. Brisbane, Australia
8. Sydney,Australia
8. Copenhagen, Denmark
8. Dusseldorf, Germany
8. Frankfurt, Germany
8. Oslo, Norway
8. Montreal, Canada
16. (tie) Calgary, Canada
16. Helsinki, Finland
16. Stockholm, Sweden
19. (tie) Berlin, Germany
19. Amsterdam, Netherlands
21. (tie) Tokyo, Japan
21. Osaka, Japan
21. Honolulu, Hawaii
24. (tie) Hamburg, Germany
24. Munich, Germany
24. Auckland, New Zealand
24. Wellington, New Zealand
28. (tie) Brussels, Belgium
28. Reykjavik, Iceland
28. Luxembourg, Luxembourg
28. Boston, Massachusetts
32. (tie) Lyon, France
32. Paris, France
34. (tie) Barcelona, Spain
34. Atlanta, Georgia
34. Chicago, Illinois
34. Lexington, Kentucky
34. Miami, Florida
39. (tie) Cleveland, Ohio
39. Houston, Texas
39. Los Angeles, California
39. Minneapolis, Minnesota
39. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
44. (tie) Hong Kong, China
44. Lisbon, Portugal
44. Madrid, Spain
44. London, England
44. San Francisco, California
49. Seattle, Washington
50. (tie) Singapore
50. Manchester, England
52. (tie) Dublin, Ireland
52. New York, New York
54. (tie) Milan, Italy
54. Detroit, Michigan
54. Budapest, Hungary
57. (tie) Prague, Czech Republic
57. Rome, Italy
57. Washington, D.C.
60. Taipei, Taiwan
61. Seoul, South Korea
62. (tie) San Juan, Puerto Rico
62. San Jose, Costa Rica
64. (tie) Athens, Greece
64. Montevideo, Uruguay
66. Santiago, Chile
67. Buenos Aires, Argentina
68. Dubai, UAE
69. (tie) Tel Aviv, Israel
69. Warsaw, Poland
71. (tie) Zagreb, Croatia
71. Abu Dhabi, UAE
73. (tie) Guangzhou, China
73. Shanghai, China
75. (tie) Panama City, Panama
75. Amman, Jordan
77. (tie) Bahrain, Bahrain
77. Beijing, China
77. Shenzhen, China
77. Moscow, Russia
81. Pretoria, South Africa
82. (tie) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
82. St. Petersburg, Russia
84. Tianjin, China
85. (tie) Sao Paulo, Brazil
85. Kiev, Ukraine
87. (tie) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
87. Lima, Peru
87. Istanbul, Turkey
87. Kuwait, Kuwait
87. Tashkent, Uzbekistan
87. Tunis, Tunisia
93. (tie) Quito, Ecuador
93. Johannesburg, South Africa
93. Bucharest, Romania
96. (tie) Asuncion, Paraguay
96. Casablanca, Morocco
98. Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
99. (tie) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
99. Baku, Azerbaijan
101. (tie) Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia
101. Bangkok, Thailand
101. Caracas, Venezuela
101. Tripoli, Libya
105. (tie) Guatemala, Guatemala
105. Mexico City, Mexico
105. Manila, Philippines
105. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
105. Belgrade, Yugoslavia
105. Harare, Zimbabwe
111. Cairo, Egypt
112. Libreville, Gabon
113. Colombo, Sri Lanka
114. Douala, Cameroon
115. (tie) Hanoi, Vietnam
115. Bogota, Columbia
115. Nairobi, Kenya
118. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
119. (tie) Jakarta, Indonesia
119. Tehran, Iran
121. New Delhi, India
122. Dakar, Senegal
123. Abidjan, Ivory Coast
124. Mumbai, India
125. Algiers, Algeria
126. Phnom Penh, Cambodia
127. (tie) Dhaka, Bangladesh
127. Lagos, Nigeria
129. Karachi, Pakistan
130. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea"
(The boldfacing of the US Cities on the list was added by me! lol)
ntreal thanks you LW !
