
Best cities ranking and report (2012) - mazsa
http://pages.eiu.com/rs/eiu2/images/EIU_BestCities.pdf
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duopixel
I'm not sure there's a point in ranking cities. I've lived in a handful of the
cities listed, and their ranking has very little to do with my own perception
of them. Cities are a bit like people in the sense that they have a character,
you can fall in love with a quirky city and be bored out of your mind with one
that looks great on paper (I'm looking at you Toronto).

I guess that highly ranked cities are more likely to be a pleasant place to
live to the average person. As for myself, I've noticed climate and warmth of
people are my own best indicators.

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FooBarWidget
That Amsterdam scores poor on the isolation metric doesn't mean much. The
Netherlands don't have many big cities in the first place. But the area around
Amsterdam is filled with lots of small towns (though I could say that about
the entire country) and train connections to other big cities like Utrecht and
Rotterdam are very good.

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mslot
It's silly, the Randstad region is one of the largest and densely populated
metropolitan areas in Europe.

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jpatokal
Hong Kong does indeed have a surprising amount of accessible green space.
However, you can only call it the world's best city in terms of "Spatial
Adjusted Liveability" if you entirely ignore the stratospheric rentals that
lead to a whole lot of people living like this:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertypicturegalleries...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertypicturegalleries/9888398/Overhead-
photos-of-cramped-apartments-in-Hong-Kong.html)

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lispm
How about the 'green space' per capita... How does Hong Kong rank there?

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threeseed
Bizarre not to include Melbourne regardless if Sydney is a proxy.

It is the world's most liveable city (according to Economist) and the world's
third best city (according to Monocle). You wouldn't say Miami is a proxy for
New York City.

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Hermel
They also forgot Vancouver, Vienna, Geneva, and Zurich, all of which
regularily make it into the top 10 in such rankings. They probably argue that
Munich is a proxy for Vienna and Zurich...

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deskamess
"""The availability of world-class cultural assets is crucial to
liveability."""

I take issue with the word crucial. Like others I do not think the list is
going to sync with everyone's needs. Did anyone else manage to find the
weighting for each of these factors/variables? It would be nice if we could
add our own weighting and see which city comes out on top. I am looking at
Vancouver these days and sad to see it not included.

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carlob
Yeah I think that using just UNESCO sites as a metric is a bit flawed. I mean
on a scale from 1 to 5 (from good to bad) Rome gets 1, Paris 3 and New York
City 4.

I live in Rome and I love it, but I wouldn't say that even if we have a bunch
of UNESCO sites, the cultural assets of the city are that much better than
Paris or NYC.

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guard-of-terra
I think they ought to divide cultural assets into what I would loosely call
"Heritage" and "Modern culture".

On the Heritage scale, Rome is an undisputed [global?] leader. On Modern
Culture scale, Paris is perhaps ahead (I've not been to NYC but imagint it's
the leader here).

These scales' appeal varies for different people.

UPD: UNESCO sites headcount is a deeply flawed metric anyway. I've heard that
South Korea has more UNESCO sites than India, which proves it is 1% history,
99% lobbying.

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nopinsight
An important criterion is missing: the quality of human interaction.

How nice and attentive your average vendors, service providers, random
strangers you ask for directions are do affect your experience in myriad ways.

In fact, it may inversely correlate with spatial density. The optimal density
is likely not the highest possible, as the report implies. Hong Kong is
notorious for its stratospheric real estate prices. This likely contributes to
the rush way average citizens, esp. lower-income service personnel, e.g. 7-11
employees, spend their time--they need to make ends meet or to fulfill strict
quota set by business owners who need to pay those high rents.

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thefinalboss
There are definite flaws in the criteria developed but I acknowledge no system
is going to be perfect. I don't necessarily agree with the effect of sprawl on
overall quality of life and ranking of a city. I like cities less densely
populated.

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bshimmin
Sprawl struck me as a curious factor too. I can see it both ways - less sprawl
means you don't have to go so far out of the city to get into the countryside;
more sprawl means there are potentially affordable suburban areas whence you
can easily commute into the city.

London, for instance, is pretty sprawling, but many of the commuter towns or
villages are actually very pleasant, desirable places to live (they can also
be extremely expensive - though not so bad, of course, as central London,
which is prohibitively expensive for anyone who isn't an oil sheikh).

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tormeh
I view it differently. Sprawl means you're never where things happen.
Everything is somewhere else, and you get there in a car. With dense cities,
everything is at your doorstep, and that makes it much more likely that you'll
actually participate in great and exciting things and events.

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skwirl
They rated Boston a 5 (worst). Boston is a pretty compact city, and you
definitely don't need a car.

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astrange
Atlanta gets to be artificially high on the list, next to actual nice cities
like Boston and NYC, because it gets a 1 in connectivity.

I guess that's because of our famous busiest airport in the world! Too bad if
you want to go anywhere in the city, though.

The public transit system only goes every 20 minutes in a + shape, makes
everyone coming from the airport buy an NFC card, and the speakers and
upcoming train monitors in every station are unusable and broken. People in
Atlanta like driving so much they force everyone else to do it along with
them.

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stride
It's funny how in Atlanta you can tell the people that love cars and never
take the train. They say things like "the public transit system only goes
every 20 minutes". Just because you ride the train once to a football game and
it was slow doesn't mean it's like that every day. During rush hour on
business days the train runs 2-5 minutes.

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astrange
Oh, the route I was thinking of was Gold Line past Lindbergh on the weekends,
or to the airport all week.

It does get faster on the weekdays (every 12 minutes?) if you're closer to
downtown, but how much of the customer base is that?

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mark_l_watson
Interesting that Hong Kong topped the list. I have only spent 1 1/2 days in
Hong Kong but I really liked it. A friend moved there about five years ago
because he could get long term research funding (for AI) and he seems to like
it there.

This study is ranking for best cities, interesting enough, but I would like to
see rankings of best places to live, in cities or not. I like to visit
beautiful cities but live in the mountains.

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ck2
Doesn't Hong Kong have pollution close to China levels?

And I see Washington DC at #14 which is in the top 20 cities with the highest
crime rates in the USA.

This is one weird report.

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blhack
I think it's because of the way they're weighting "world class cultural
assets".

It sounds like these are basically tourist spots. Museums, and national
heritage sites and things like that. DC has got TONS of those sorts of things,
so it would make sense that it would rank high (at least abnormally high in
that category)

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Numberwang
Having lived in Stockholm, now living in London I'm not sure how their
pollution ranking can be comparable.

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lazyant
I've lived in Toronto and I love-hate it. If the authors of the report had
spent one day commuting to work in the city or looking for a condo to buy on
an average salary I'm pretty sure Toronto wouldn't be up high in a "best city"
ranking.

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tim333
Having fairly recently been to Hong Kong (#1) and Phnom Penh (bottom 10) I
wouldn't say HK was that much more liveable. Indeed the air made my eyes
sting. The wages would be far higher in HK though.

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latch
I've spent years in Hong Kong and months on Phnom Penh. They're not even in
the same league. Hong Kong is one of the most developed cities in the world,
Phnom Penh is one of the least. I honestly can't understand where you're
coming from. The pollution? The air can get horrible (summer 2012..ughh), but
it's pretty bad in Phnom Penh's also. Plus, the water and medical facilities
are downright dangerous.

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johan_larson
Toronto made it? Hard to believe. No way I'd live here if it weren't for the
job. Way too expensive.

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imanaccount247
Even in their specific ratings Toronto does poorly (although better than it
should), and yet somehow bad scores almost across the board adds up to good?

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johan_larson
The total analysis is on page 13. The analysis on page 11 only covers "spatial
characteristics", and TO doesn't do well on those, receiving a -7 adjustment.

I don't see any consideration of living costs and income, which is a really
glaring flaw.

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hyp0
what happened to the auto pdf warning?

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dang
Whoops, I must have deleted that when I added 2012. Perils of late night
edits.

(The software adds "[pdf]" on submission but doesn't add it back if you edit
it out. This is so we can fix the occasional case where the software gets it
wrong.)

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hyp0
thanks! the software used to add a link to scribd for pdfs. A pdf label that
was added separately from the title text like that (but not a link) would
help.

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paulgb
Note the date (2012)

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dang
Thanks. Added.

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joelrunyon
Is there an updated list?

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dang
What do you mean by an updated list?

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joelrunyon
Not 2012.

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APT20
hmm... they rated Damascus but not Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem?! why is that?

