Mr. Blatham,
Are you really coming to New York in January or February? That would be great! Wouldn't it be fun have an Abuzz, a2k get together? We could all meet on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougall at the Le Figaro Cafe.
It would be very interesting to find a study of what cities in the world are the most livable. I am going to guess without much danger of being off key that there's a regional factor in each of these countries as far as livability. I should check back into the study to see if they cover that but didn't immediately see any.
The U.S. strikes out there:
Most liveable cities
October 4 2002
1. Melbourne Australia
2. Vancouver Canada
3. Perth Australia
4. Vienna Austria
5. Toronto Canada
6. Geneva Switzerland
7. Zurich Switzerland
8. Adelaide Australia
9. Brisbane Australia
10. Sydney Australia
11. Copenhagen Denmark
12. Dusseldorf Germany
13. Frankfurt Germany
14. Oslo Norway
15. Montreal Canada
Oslo is one of the biggest cities with a population of under 500,000 (last I counted) since it was expanded to be mostly forrest and park it must be a very nice place.
Lola
Just what I was thinking. That would be fun.
Survey conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit
http://www.eiu.com/
http://www.economistgroup.co
The U.S. isn't even in the top 50! San Francisco appears at 51.
I wouldn't be so sure about Perth, Lightwiz.
My sister-in-law lived there for 20 years. Good standard of living, but boooooring, and very far away from anything.
1. Norway brrrr.....
2. Sweden brrrrr.......
3. Canada brrr......
4. Belgium somewhat, brrrr..
5. Australia nice place to visit, but to live?
6. United States I love it! opportunity to succeed is one of the best in this world.
7. Iceland more brrrsss.....
8. Netherlands some more brrrss......
9. Japan unemployment is rising fast......
10. Finland last brrrrrr.......
Great list, Lightwizard...
Bit concerned about Melbourne coming first - the weather, friends, the weather!!!
But Oz featured pretty well, and the US is..........................51
CI - I guess it depends on what you want. I certainly wouldn't want to live in California.
Lightwizard, The reason the US cities struck out was because there are just too many to list as "the most livable cities to live." The problem with any list is the subjective nature of what is important to one person compared to the next. If access to cultural events is an important criteria, the smaller cities that meets most other criteria would be eliminated from the list. Many retirees are moving to retirement communities some distance from major urban areas, because they want to slow down the pace of their life. I think any list provided should include what criterias were used; what was important to be included on the list. c.i.
margo, We both have our biases - don't we?
c.i.
Yes, I agree, c.i., it does definitely depend on the criteria. Many years ago now, I did a senior paper for a competition when I was graduating from SMU in Dallas. The assignment was to compare the quality of life in two locations. Since I was leaving for graduate school in New York, I chose New York and Dallas. As I recall, I was able to choose my own criteria from among a list of variables. And, New York came out on top. Based both on certain facts I gathered from my research at the time, and on my own choice of criteria. For me, exciting activity and opportunity to learn figure large.
That was my point with the earlier HDI comments Lola. The criteria used to develop the list is all based on Western European values. The list may be informative for those of us that prefer those values but what about those that don't?
The "Homeless People's Network" even has a list of "Most Livable Cities" that uses criteria such as the length of park benches in public parks as a criteria. S/He who sets the criteria gets to place whatever they prefer on "the list".
c.i., i don't think that u.s. cities are cancelling each other out for the list. if that was the case, no country would be able to have more than 1 city on the list.
Lightwizard - Do you have a direct link to the list you saw? I found several on the WWW but they don't match up with your comment about US cities. According to the stories I found there are 13 US cities in the top 50 worldwide and SF comes in dead last amongst those. Honolulu is the top US city at #21 with Boston comes in at #28.
http://www.clubkhmer.com/article.php?sid=81
I just heard Montreal and my neighborhood in particular was rated in the top 10 best places to live in the world, by the Utne Reader... Now I just heard this today, so beware
hmmm, Utne Reader. That is a resource I'm rather fond of. It does rate tofu-type things a bit highly, but it's still a decent source of interesting information.
Follow the links I posted -- they are the publishers of "The Economist" magazine and for this kind of study is one of the most respected sources in the world. The last time I saw a study in the U.S., Huntington Beach, CA was the top U.S. city -- it may have been done by the same organization. I can understand climate being number one with many of us but I think there are many other factors that effect the ratings of a particular city. American corporations seem very attracted to taking advantage of opportunities and establishing themselves in other countries -- this is one thing I can agree with. It may not be our future but those opportunities are going to be there, almost anyplace in the world. Of course, California is now the fifth largest economy in the world but if you want to come out here and battle the freeways, breath the polluted air (in any urban area where these opportunities exist now), try to converse with people who seem to be manufactured by BASF ( I could give you a very long list of downsides), then please follow those opportunities according to your logic. Opportunities make a liveable city? It's certainly different if one has the money to live anywhere but that's one of the unknown factors with each individual. If one considers themselves a very cultured person, that certainly would be a determination of where to live. The U.S. would fall quite short on that criteria except the large cities, say, those with a major symphony orchestra. Orange County as a good orchestra and conductor but they are shackled in playing the old warhorses again and again. The opening of the Segerstrom Hall was the scene of a Beethoven's Ninth where people applauded after each movement (they still haven't been able to remove all the hay from behind there ears here). They call it the "Orange Curtain" and if it wasn't but an hours ride to L.A. museums, concerts, et al, I wouldn't think of living here. The South Orange Coast from Huntington Beach down through San Clemente is beautiful -- the coves of Laguna Beach are storybook. Why aren't they considered high on the list of liveable cities?
Lightwizard wrote: Why aren't they considered high on the list of liveable cities?
Because the survey started by choosing 130 cities with the intent of rank ordering those 130 only. It looks like their selection list was intended to spread the cities around geographically as much as possible rather than anything else. Not to hurl insults or anything but I'd guess most of us in the US would place a lot of other cities ahead of Cleveland, OH yet Cleveland is on the list and those other cities aren't... Of course the whole "Livable Cities" movement has their own criteria for what is and isn't good and they generally look down their noses at "suburbs" of major cities even those those suburbs may be cities in their own right.
I was being facetious about the small cities I mentioned being on the list and Cleveland. OH has been on the best U.S. cities at least once (when confined to U.S. only). I haven't gone that deeply into the criteria that EIU utilizes but the "looking down their noses" methodology is denying the intent of the list. Of course, it's not going to conform to what some of us want to believe about U.S. cities. The criteria that there are opportunities not present in other cities (or countries), well maybe we should ask the execs at Enron for that info.
