The world’s most liveable cities | Hacker News Reader

The world’s most liveable cities

economist.com

93 pointswalterbell145 comments

> Ten of these cities are in western Europe, notably Paris, which has suffered multiple terrorist attacks.

This seems incredibly misguided and really makes me question the entire ranking. It's one thing for the populace to irrationally fear terrorist attacks, it's another thing to codify that fear into an actual ranking without considering the vanishingly small chance of being affected.

The likelihood of you being a victim of a terrorist attack in any western city is negligible. It should simply not be a factor in considering where to live, full stop. The ranking doesn't include the percentage chance of an air conditioner falling on you, so it shouldn't consider terrorism.

All I am seeing from this is people's perception of their own cities. At Melbourne, people are going to be filled with city-spirit.

Though this correlation breaks down for a lot of cities... (And I am just guessing on Melbourne as well)

I really don't know if this chart gives any credible insight.

I agree, but i still wonder how big the chance really is ? All the numbers you see are usually country or even worldwide averages. But for example, if you live in Paris as a young professional who uses public transport a lot, flies a lot and goes to big public events regularly, i could see the likelihood being significantly higher than for someone living in a smaller town. Sure the average is really low, but as someone who is constantly around really crowded areas in a big european capital, i wonder how high the risk really is. Of course it's still irrational fear, i get that.

If they really wanted to include this as a factor, that's the sort of analysis which they should be doing. I'm pretty sure that it would show the fear is almost totally irrational.

For example, 35 people died in the Brussels Metro attack. Inshallah that's the only attack on the Brussels Metro this year.

That's 35 out of an annual ridership of 135 million. [0] Thus the chance of you being a victim on any particular journey is 35/135 million. If you take the subway twice a day, your likelihood of being a victim of a terrorist attack is 0.019%. It's just not a real risk.

What really annoys me is that they already include the crime rate is a separate consideration. Is terrorism not a crime? I don't particularly care if I die at the hands of a suicide bomber or a random mugger, so it doesn't make any sense to dramatize the risk of the former when it can already be captured in the standard crime rate.

[0] http://www.stib-mivb.be/figures.html?l=en

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=35%2F135+million*365*2

But 135 million is the number of journeys, the number of unique people taking these journeys will be much much lower. If you take the metro twice every weekday, that is already around 500 journeys per year for one person, so the number of unique passengers per year would probably be much lower, more like single digit millions. The resulting likelihood is still low, but the chance of something happening over the next couple of years in a place that you are in frequently, thus forever shattering your sense of security in a city that otherwise has a super low crimerate is not that off. You don't have to be killed to be affected in a negative way by something like this after all. Adding to that is the fact that these kind of events have increased in frequency as of late and who knows how it develops in the future, especially if you country just took in huge amounts of syrian refugees without any background checks whatsoever.

I'm not sure what you're point is, because I captured that.

Each journey has a 35/135 million chance of you dying in a terrorist attack. I multiplied that by the number of journeys you would take per year.

"your likelihood of being a victim of a terrorist attack is 0.019%. It's just not a real risk"

If you do that for 50 years, your risk is now almost 1%!

I am sorry, but the risk of dying from cancer, heart problems or car accident in the working life period of ages 20-65 lifespan is comparable to that 0,95% "composite subway terrorism" risk.

So if the security problems in Belgium continue, you should totally worry about it.

Your lifetime risk of dying from heart disease is 20%. For cancer, it's slightly lower. [0]

So yea, even if you ISIS continued to carry out a major terrorist attack on your subway every year for the next 50 years, it would still be a relatively tiny risk.

[0] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/how-scared-should-w...

Most of your heart disease risk is after the age of 65 (if you live in a developed country).

However, most of your terrorism risk and car accident risk is before the age of 65. This is where they dominate.

Do you think that car accident risk is real? How much fatalities from car accidents were there in Belgium this year?

"Lifetime risk" is stupid metric, borderline fradulent. I don't care about dying at the age of 85, would welcome it after all. I'll care a great deal if my relative dies at the age of 30 or 40.

This does not make sense. The bombs don't select by age.

Also, one would have to accumulate an overall score, cancer, heart, terror. I'm quite sure all these factors are different per region.

"35 people died in the Brussels Metro attack […] It's just not a real risk

28 people died in traffic in Brussels in 2015 (https://bestat.economie.fgov.be/bestat/crosstable.xhtml?data...), and Belgian traffic is dangerous, compared to Western Europe. So, if the 35 is not an outlier, I would call it a real risk.

Yes, it isn't large, but I would guess most unnatural deaths are from causes that each have 'negligible' probability.

Personally, I don't think fear of dangerous traffic is a very useful metric for deciding where to live either.

Also, if ISIS does successfully conduct an annual terrorist attack on the Brussels Metro then it might be something worth being more afraid of. At this point, treating it as a major factor in deciding where to live is just fear-mongering—especially when I personally think a place having previously suffered a terrorist attack lowers the future risk.

I read the same thing after the Paris attacks. Attacks caused 137 deaths and 368 injuries. This is low compared to the Paris population (2 million in the city, 10 million in the urban area). But personally, several friends were seriously injured in the Bataclan, and many of my colleagues knew victims too. You don't have to be a direct victim to suffer from an attack. Nearly every young parisian is linked to a victim. So, no, it's not a "totally irrational" fear.

On the flip side, while the actual _risk_ we all agree is low, that's not the same as the human fear of it.

Even if illogical, given two otherwise equal cities, which is more "livable": the one with a stable and open atmosphere, or the one with scared citizens, under a state of emergency, where the country at large is implementing knee-jerk responses against the "others" who are related to this attack (referencing the current burkini bans rolling across France).

This.

If you visit Paris now, you see more police, a slightly worse nightlife. Right after the attacks you could see everyone was really on edge.

On the other hand if you're taking into account this kind of mood/atmosphere, a place like Paris should be generally pretty low on that scale as people you interact with in your daily life seem a lot more stressed, tired, unhappy and sometimes aggressive than in any other French city. I know it's a stereotype, but it's kinda true.

Another point is that you cannot afford living in Paris with just one working. Even if he's working as a software developer. How a city can be "liveable" if you cannot earn enough to live there?

Programmers make good money, but plenty of people make far more. Breaking 200k is very doable with a single income.

The question is if the city's are worth living there assuming you can afford to.

How much is the percentage of the people who is living in the city and makes that amount of income?

That's a good point that I hadn't considered.

It would be much better if they directly measured the impact of this on cities though, particularly because the reaction to terrorist attacks is vastly different (see the difference in German and French reactions, for example). In fact, it could then penalize heavy-handed responses even when there hasn't been a terrorist attack. For example, the US maintains some draconian security measures and a police state mentality even though there haven't been any recent terror attacks (does every single MTA rider really need to be constantly reminded to watch suspicious packages?).

For that matter, I'm confident that you're quite safe from terrorism in Dubai. But the ranking should really include the dramatic security apparatus/environment which is in place to maintain that safety.

Almost per definition, most of the damage done is the public reaction. In that sense, the US is affected much more than countries who have been targeted much more recently.

Yeah, right. With all due respect, that is bullshit.

Say this to the Jewish community in Malmo, Sweden. The violence they have suffered at the hands of violent Islam is not a statistical anomaly.

Say this to the Jewish community in Copenhagen.

Say this to Israelis.

Say this residents of Iraqis.

Say this to residents of Turks.

Say this to Syrians.

Say this to women walking alone at night in Germany and Sweden.

Terrorism is real in all its forms (Islamic, "Mentally ill", etc), and it has a real impact on entire countries.

The recent attacks across France has hurt summer tourism.

Synagogues and Hillel schools around the world have high security because they have been targets of terrorism. (And not just graffiti)

Go live in some of these places (especially as a woman or Jew). Then come back to this conversation and tell me if you still believe that.

With all due respect, I am Jewish and lived the last 4 years in the Middle East. I've also traveled extensively in both Europe and the Middle East, thank you very much.

Terrorism is designed to breed fear, so it's no surprise that you (and others) are afraid. That doesn't mean it's not a statistical anomaly.

You're conflating a lot of different things. War (what's affecting Syrians), sexual violence (why a woman might be afraid to walk at night), anti-semitism (which I've seen far more of from Trump supporters than any Muslims I know), and terrorism are different phenomena.

> The recent attacks across France has hurt summer tourism.

So? I don't dispute that a lot of people are irrationally afraid of terrorism, that doesn't make it a real threat any more than the fact that millions of people believing in reincarnation makes it real.

"But you are a single data point, and that does not prove anything" :-)

My guess is that you are not a practicing Jew active in a community in Europe or the Middle East. If you were I doubt you would have this point of view.

I know lots of non-practicing / secular Jews who share your point of view, and this comes from an ignorance of what security measures it takes to live a Jewish life in Europe. I don't blame them, and I don't blame you. How would you know the threat unless you have seen it before?

I don't speak of only anti-semitic views. Antisemitism becomes terrorism when it is targeted violence against groups of people for the purpose of political or social objectives.

It is not just war in Syria. There is terrorism. Car bombs, massacres, and more against the civilian population to keep the docile. ISIS wants power.

Last, and this is my key point -- you are jumping through intellectual hoops to somehow magically arrive that

...and are you really saying that the likelihood of terrorism is the same as reincarnation?

If so, then I'll stop here....

So, your prefer your anecdata to his anecdata?

of course :-)

It's hardly anecdotal evidence, while I do agree that "terrorism" in Europe is not currently a major threat to your life on average he's correct about the situation of the Jewish communities.

Jews and Jewish businesses and institutions are attacked on a daily basis across Europe. The security around Jewish schools, temples, shops and even neighbourhoods is very substantial. In France soldiers still provide protection to Jewish institutions.

The Jewish community in Malmo has been pretty decimated, about 80-90% of it left, it wasn't that big but it doesn't matter. Jews have been leaving Europe in droves in the past few years, the majority of "anti semitic" incidents in Europe involve individuals with near eastern or north african heritage, and if you count only violent crimes then the statistics are even worse.

It doesn't take more than a simple Google search to find out that at least those parts of his claims are pretty dead on the money.

> Say this to women walking alone at night in Germany and Sweden.

I can't speak for Sweden, but I can say: if you actually lived in Germany, you would know "terrorist attack" is very, very low on people's lists of priorities. I don't know a single person who changed a single habit because of it.

Do you think there is a level of political correctness that people cannot pierce in "polite conversation?"

I feel that this is the case in Sweden. There are so many topics of discussion that are taboo that people avoid them. And, I think that includes this kind of terrorism and expression personal fears.

For example, Swedes will not say they are scared of radical Islam because they are afraid of being perceived as being afraid of radical Islam. (And therefore, racist)

That is why as ask the question -- do you think Germans have the same "meta-fear?"

edit: clarity / grammar

IMHO, I don't think Germans have that "meta-fear" you mention. I found Germans to be quite direct, and even the actual racists from the extreme right (the ones suggesting that they'll "give gas" to the refugee issue) do not seem concerned about that issue.

There is a discussion about how to integrate a million refugees, but it's less "what if they kill us all?" and more "we have no idea how to accommodate so much people all at once".

I used to live in Melbourne and now live in Tokyo. I really enjoyed my time in Melbourne, but I don't see how the two can be seen as comparable in crime or public transport.

Tokyo's rail system is fantastic and cheap. I can get to basically anywhere within the city in a very short amount of time. I used to have trouble with train delays and cancellations in Melbourne, and the timetable was more a rough estimate than anything that could be counted on. Don't know if it's changed that much since I left ten years ago.

And to me, safety at night is quite different. I feel safe going out here; whether it was true or not I can not say the same about my time in Melbourne.

Melbourne does have the late-night drunk problem that all anglo cities do, but it doesn't have to employ people in white gloves to push you into those trains that do arrive... :)

In any case, yes, the public transport system has become worse in the last ten years - it doesn't have the capacity for the growing population, and it's of the terrible hub-and-spoke style anyway. Sucks if you're going crosstown.

The wife and I fight about that one.

I'm a defender of wheel and spoke. It results in a drawcard city centre.

Yeah it sucks to have to uber it from Fitzroy to Brunswick (le hipster horror!) when they're so close on the map, and she's always complaining that they need an outer ring transport line (and I agree that it would be awesome), but I view it on the same level as I do French people complaining about wine.

You move here from another city without public transport and you just walk out the front door laughing each day :p

Would you feel safe in Tokyo if it were full of Australians?

I can vouch for that. I've seen people riding bikes around Tokyo, alone, at 4 in the morning. It really does feel like an incredibly safe city.

I can't imagine living in a city where this is not the norm

I imagine there's a certain level of crime/transport where there's almost no distinction between the two. The truth is Melbourne is a safe modern western city, which is to say practically 0 or min() as far as cities go.

I've only moved to Melbourne 2 years ago.

I understand the transport thing compared to Tokyo, but again, I imagine there a level where the scale tops out. Melbournians love to bitch about their transport, and the train capacity isn't keeping up with the growth in the burbs, but live within the inside of the tram network and you're basically set and timetable-less. Plus we do have the free tram zone and all night transport now.

Of course, I tell people there are two Melbournes. Zone 1: transport everywhere, compact walking city. Zone 2: suburban sprawl, connected by single train lines into the city and free ways.

Live in Zone 1 and you generally don't go to Zone 2. Live in Zone 2, and thank god you don't have a Sydney commute our house prices :p

I suppose you are right. I'll concede that they both have public transport systems that get you to where you need to go, and the extra efficiency in the Tokyo system tops out the scale they are using to measure.

But it is interesting that Tokyo's train system has to be efficient, to support the amount of passengers that go through it. Shinagawa station after a 15 minute delay on the Yamanote line in rush hour is wall-to-wall people, whereas the same in Melbourne is just a bunch of grumpy commuters stuck at Flinders St :)

I'm not sure I agree about the crime or at least it doesn't match my experience

I think part of the issue might be what crime brings up in your mind.

AFAICT in pretty much any "western" city (Paris, London, Brussels, Hamburg, NYC, LA, SF) the odds of having something stolen are extremely high. In SF if you leave something visible in your car overnight my experience is the odds are greater than 1 in 2 that the next morning you'll find your car window has been bashed in and the item/items stolen. In Paris if you look away from your purse stuff will be stolen. In Brussels if you sit at a bench and put your bag under the bench someone will reach under from the other side and steal your bag.

So far in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Singapore that doesn't seem to be the case.

So while the odds of me getting hurt in one city vs another might be low the odds of me experiencing theft seem much higher in some of those top cities than others.

I'd be curious to know how Australia's and Canada's cities do along that dimension. Can you leave your laptop at a Starbucks unattended for an 10-60 mins and not have it stolen?

My completely subjective experience is that Vancouver 'feels' a lot safer than SF but that's only based on living in Vancouver and visiting SF (which has made me not really want to live there).

I don't own a car but my building has outdoor parking and break-ins appear to be unusual either there or out on the street. I don't think it would be particularly wise to leave a laptop unattended in Starbucks but I'd also be somewhat surprised if one was stolen if left whilst going to the washroom.

In 13 years living in Vancouver I've never had anything stolen. I don't hear about it very often either (can't recall the last time I heard a friend have anything stolen). I also have not heard of anyone I know being mugged here.

Your SF example is absurd. Half the cars with stuff in them at night are not broken into. My experience in Bernal Heights is not like you describe. I agree about Tokyo. On the other hand, here in Maui, where I live now, I had a pair of flip-flops stolen during a 20 minute beach walk.

Maybe Bernal Heights is different but you walk down 18th next to Dolores park and often see the piles of glass every 3-4 parking spots. Same on Folsom in SOMA. Same on 11th. Same on Franklin. The same is also bad in LA but SF seems worse.

But hey, you don't have to take my word for it

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/san-fran...

I only visited Melbourne for several days, after living in Auckland for a year.

The only advantage I found is much more bars and cafes, so it feels more european (Wellington has that too).

Problem with Melbourne is it has grown too big. In comparison, Auckland population is 1 mil (and its struggling to scale).

Another advantage in Auckland is milder climate and lack of fauna that is trying to kill you.

Dichotomy I like to use is Wellington & Melbourne - bars and european culture. Sydney & Auckland - beaches and surf culture.

Tech scene in Auckland is not very impressive though. There is one consultancy (I think its called Movio) that focus on functional programming and Xero that has MS stack, though does well on frontend.

It's very easy to recognize a bogus livable cities ranking: if it doesn't include a single Swiss city in its Top 10, like the list above, look elsewhere. Economist Intelligence Unit, a body that compiled the list above tend to be heavily skewed towards Anglo-Saxon countries and doesn't get any money for its lists as far as I know. This means that they can be very much like Monocle and just include in the list the cities they themselves like (Monocle constantly puts Copenhagen very highly in their lists). Fine for them, as long as they don't sell the list for hard currency.

There is a company though that sells their livable cities rankings for hard currency, and this company is Mercer. Mercer has its own very systematic methodology fo measuring livability and because of that multinational companies use Mercer's lists to come up with salaries they pay for the same job description in different countries. Mercer's list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...) for several years in a row is topped with Vienna and only contains less that a third of non-European cities in its top 30, which absolutely correctly reflects the relatively low quality of life anywhere in the world outside of developed parts of Europe.

> reflects the relatively low quality of life anywhere in the world outside of developed parts of Europe.

Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan all want a chat. (BTW: That is close to 200 million people, aka the same as the "developed" parts of Europe).

"It's very easy to recognize a bogus livable cities ranking: if it doesn't include a single Swiss city in its Top 10, like the list above, look elsewhere."

Zurich and Geneva ranked 10 and 12 last year. To not put those cities in the top 10 seems reasonable. Being small and expensive usually reflects badly in rankings.

Can't say for other cities, but Vancouver is quite liveable if you gathered your wealth elsewhere. The median household salary is 22nd Canada wide in 2010[1]. The housing price is world renowned.

I wonder if there's a list for world's most liveable cities for young people. Where technologies are rapidly being adopted by both the community and policy makers, knowledgeable government, less presence of established powers/influencers who prevent progress.

And how hard to create such a city from scratch?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Median_household_incom...

Agreed. Vancouver is only "liveable" if you are extremely established. Wages are pathetic. Its a city full of investors and not much else. It isn't a place for anyone young who doesn't have a steady trust income.

On the other hand, much of what makes Vancouver liveable has little to do with the city and more to do with the province and country. Get out of Vancouver, to Squamish, Chilliwack or even to Bowen and you can afford to work.

Do you think Vancouver is getting some of the tech industry sprawl out of Northern Washington?

I mean it's difficult to get work visas unless you have an essential skill, and companies don't want to hire people without interviewing them in person. With Washington so close, companies can interview highly skilled individuals without spending a fortune on airfare.

Conversely, you're not going to get a lot of unskilled immigrants and you need to compete with the wages of your neighbour. It almost seems like the gentrification problem would be terrible.

Vancouver is liveable if you're happy renting and a software engineer. Buying is unaffordable but if like me you have no desire to own property that's not a major problem.

Wages in tech are low compared to the major US tech hubs. That can be an advantage if you contract for US companies as I've been doing recently tho.

Why are you ok with renting?

I wonder why people are ok with buying. For most people buying a house is a bad investment. Unless you're very wealthy a house is going to represent a big chunk of your net worth which means you're not going to have a diversified portfolio and you're going to be borrowing money to buy it. Few ordinary investors would contemplate making a highly leveraged investment in the stock market but seem to think it becomes a good idea with housing.

Historically housing also tends to underperform the stock market when you take all costs into account (taxes, maintenance, strata fees, etc.). It's also a highly illiquid asset and tends to correlate with economic conditions (e.g. in an economic downturn you risk losing your job and facing a negative equity trap to move to find another one).

Some people derive enjoyment from owning their own home and if that's the case then maybe the financial downsides still make sense for them. For me I'd rather not have any of the hassles involved with home ownership and let my landlord deal with them. Personally owning a house seems like an unappealing prospect and it would have to be not just a neutral financial decision but a heavily net positive one for me to consider it.

In some cases in some cities in Canada, and where you are living you can rent and save and be ahead compared to buying in the current market.

The savings can be used to fund investments which make you more money.

In TO and the surrounding areas a fully detached houses start around 750k, and in the core can be way more expensive. Average home price is heading (or is over) 1m CAD. I can get a shoe box condo (1b/studio) in the "close" burbs for mid-high 200-300k.

A real house, detached that is nice, about 1.5 hours away approaches 200-300k.

I've been lucky to have a nice landlord for a while until he sold the rental unit, then the new landlord started charging more for laundry/parking/anything the law allows. He also tried his best to increase rent. You must have heard that the ultra low vacancy situation leads to rent bidding wars and whatnot[1]. The renting market is current a seller market.

Being a home owner you have to be in the market once. One good rational decision and you are set. Being a renter means being the buyer all the time. At least for me I dont want to spend the extra time to learn the skills to be an expert renter and try to outsmart the landlord year after year.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-ren...

Protections for renters are pretty strong in Vancouver, there's not much landlords can do to increase the rent faster than the cap. I don't really know what you mean by being an expert renter, certainly there are far fewer things you need to know about to avoid being burned than if you buy a property.

In the modern world I know of very few home owners who are in the market once. Most people have housing needs that change over time: marriage, kids, job changes (wanting a shorter commute), changes in financial situation. It's generally easier to adapt to those quickly as a renter.

Nowadays I tend to go for furnished rentals. I don't have any more desire to own most of the contents of housing than I do to own the property. That means moving is relatively low cost and effort if my housing needs change.

Hmmm, lots of not-extremely-established people call Vancouver their home. I really wonder how many people here are basing their opinions just on trendy news pieces on Vancouver's housing. Pretty disappointing.

Any major city still has low wage workers, but for Software Engineering many of the positions in Vancouver are not proportional to the cost of living.

I grew up near Vancouver and am currently working in Germany because I was getting better offers among other reasons.

> lots of not-extremely-established people call Vancouver their home.

No they don't. Nobody earning 20$/hour moves to vancouver. Those who do earn low wages have roots in the city. They started renting before the rise (and now live in fear of their landlord selling). Or they bought 20+ years ago and are now sitting on a pile of equity. Or they are living in a friend/parent's basement. Such people are established in the city. The low-pay stranger isn't welcome in Vancouver.

For sure. If they've been living here for some years. The housing crisis wasn't this bad until maybe last 5 years. But it has prevented not only young talents coming to the city, but also small-middle businesses flourishing. As the list is published yearly, shouldn't it reflect up-to-date situations? And Vancouver's renting market is going frenzy at the moment[1], is there a single option left for young people to live here with peace of mind?

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-ren...

Don't know a specific list, but you may want to take a look at Cluj-Napoca. A few guys from here put together a site, more or less as a BREXIT joke: http://www.transylvaniabeyond.com/welcome#move-to-transylvan.... A bit commercial, but not very far away from the truth. I've lived here for my entire life, but traveled a lot as well (Europe & US) and so far I haven't found another place I'd switch to.

Once I saw Vancouver on the list, it made me question its validity. At least the Bay Area's prices are driven by actual jobs and not just foreign housing investments.

It goes to show how harmful the press can be in shaping the reputation of a city. Vancouver is a very popular destination for the rest of Canada and anyone who wants to move to Canada, not just foreign investors. It's more than foreign investment that's driving up prices. Also consider that high-tech companies in Vancouver are stingy wage-wise and think the city itself is a work benefit.

Is the press wrong that housing prices in Vacouver are exorbitant and mainly driven by foreign speculation?

Well... I moved out of Stockholm because living in a big city means dealing with lots of things that will just steal your lifetime. The commutes were horrible, and housing was expensive. I now live outside a town of 120.000 people with big forrests nearby, and a 17 minute commute to work. Our house cost one million SEK less than our 60m2 apartment.

I couldn't imagine living in a big city anymore. Just moving from a big city gave me more than an hour less commutes, 200m to a big forrest (as in I could easily walk a day in any direction without crossing a road worth being called a road) and a 1500m2 garden where my dog and child can enjoy themselves.

Sure, my salary is a bit less, but so are my costs. My loans are lower and cheaper, I pay much less for transportation and counting my commute I work one hour less per day.

Acquiring wealth is certainly a crucial attribute on making a city "livable", and it's completely left out here.

Just because ISIS mentions a cities name, does not really mean it makes the city less livable. This article isn't Economist worthy.

The more you know about any particular subject, you start to realize that the Economist is not all that great and it really makes you question what they know about things you might not know a lot about.

The Economist is following mainstream journalism in general, then.

sadly yes.

Their area of focus is economics after all. Economists never seem to be able to agree on anything except in hindsight.

Completely agreed. Their science podcast is absolute garbage, and I've stopped reading the magazine because of it.

Exactly, and with enough money, pretty much every city is very livable.

> with enough money, pretty much every city is very livable

Unless your idea of fun is sitting all day behind tall fence, this might be false for a huge number of cities in Eastern Europe and perhaps Africa.

Imagine that there's basically no roads. That every road in the city looks like this: http://izhevsk.ru/forums/icons/forum_pictures/005326/5326795... Imagine a thick cover of mud on said streets also, Deadwood-style.

You can surely buy a huge expensive car but you can't buy roads, and not only that.

From the survey's website:

> The latest findings of The Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Ranking – which provides scores for lifestyle challenges in 140 cities worldwide

140 cities is nothing when it comes to deciding "World's most liveable cities" - it's not even one city per country!

Being from Harare, it's good to know that 1) We were worth a survey 2) We have overtaken Lagos, Algiers and Tripoli.

Though i think both are lies. Things are tough in Harare, but who knows, I haven't been to the other 3.

The worst stable city is usually better than the best of the unstable. All the other 3 there is low level civil war going on.

In Harare - if you do not cross zanu-pf you at least could try to make a living.

Yeah, that surprised me as well. I'm worrying what caused the increase since things aren't really looking up right now.

But as venomsnske said, it could be that we have no civil war.

The liveable cities lists are never accurate. It's extremely subjective. People have very different priorities when it comes to what city is 'ideal' for them. You have to visit them to know for sure - A big part of it is that people in different countries tend to have vastly different mentalities (sometimes it's hard to put your finger on it) but it can affect the whole experience of living in a particular city.

From that list, I've been to Melbourne, Perth and Vienna; Melbourne and Perth were fine but they are nowhere near my favourite cities to live.

I will agree that Vienna is really nice though - It's clean, orderly, has a good culture, people are very friendly, food is great, it's affordable (especially accommodation) and public utilities are great.

I completely agree. Being able to escape the city and get to the mountains is important for me, but that sort of thing is never taken into account. Cost of living is often given as a reason, yet they usually fail to factor in the level of wages.

Since the main audience in HN are techies. I think if we put tech jobs and startups as part of the equation, those rankings will change dramatically.

As a techie in Melbourne I can tell you I stand by my city being a great place to live and work for techies.

Which companies in Melbourne do you think are the most interesting, from a hacker point of view?

I know REA have a good engineering focus but there must be others

Carsales(.com.au) apparently have a decent culture and are located in Melbourne.

Maybe have a look at who goes to certain meetup groups that are relevant?

Carsales.com.au is mostly a PHP shop, if that floats your boat. REA is a ruby shop.

There are plenty of other smaller companies doing interesting work there, however!

Source: was living there 12 months ago

I am biased but the company I work for is cool. Interesting domain, hard problems with novel solutions and a global focus. http://biarrirail.com

Evanto is well known as a good place to work. BoM have a large presence in Melbourne as well and have some interesting problems. Though their culture isn't what it could be.

I don't know as the value equation is the same as most other jobs (techies are people too) with the difference being how many other people in your industry are around for networking and jobs. Melbourne is very livable although the real estate game is a pain. The choice for most people is rent near public transport or buy a home way out and spend an extra 40 mins on top of your normal commute time along with 10-15% more of your income.

The tech community here seems on par with Vancouver as far as software goes, but much less in terms of hardware. At least it's not as Enterprise oriented as Sydney seemed to be.

Melbourne's really liveable - if you own a house already. If you don't then you can look forward to renting for the rest of your life.

It is nice here (as a visitor anyway) but I checked house prices and it is not that bad depending where you want to live. Personally I like visiting cities but would not want to live in them: for Melbourne, if I had to live here, I would buy in Olinda and drive to the office. Then again I would never go 5 days a week to the office, more likely I would plan all meetings in one day and work from home the rest.

Olinda is way too far out to make it into the city with any regularity.

After living in various locations all over Melbourne, I now have being within 10 mins walk of public transport as a MUST. (Now I have 2 tram stops almost on my doorstep)

Ah someone from my area - I commute into south bank everyday from Ferntree Gully. I actually don't mind the train trip in. It's a bit further to a train station from Olinda though (assuming that was how you travelled in).

Olinda is beautiful, as long as you are ok to be on bushfire alert at least a couple of days a year

There's a suprising number of tech people out in FG/UFG/Belgrave. At friend's parties out that way there is always a significant number of people in IT.

In any case, my point was more about the importance of being close to public transport: Ferntree Gully has a train station, while Olinda does not.

Like said, I would not work for a company that demands me into an office regurlarly (more than once a week) as it is not needed.

Yep, runaway house prices... just like the rest of the top 10 cities.

The reason why the house prices are so expensive in these places is because they are good places to live. Good old supply-and-demand at work.

Artificial restrictions on supply, artificially low interest rates (supply of credit) to keep the bubble inflated. Free markets at work. (I am not sure if this is actually the case in Melborne, but it certainly is in many other major cities - London comes to mind).

Yep, Australia has a massive real estate bubble, and when it pops, we're screwed. However, despite all the things you mentioned, people are still willing to pay the pricetag... because those places in the top 10 are nice places to live. If they weren't nice places, they wouldn't be able to leverage the higher prices.

Right now is actually a really good time to buy. The changes made to the building regs a few years ago in several inner city suburbs meant that many new apartment blocks have popped up - driving down the price of everything. Supply and demand.

It'd be nice to re-calculate this chart with a sixth dimension added: median income divided by cost-of-living.

That does not help at all unfortunately because cost of living is just too different for different types of people. Eg: families vs single developers in their twenties.

How is a family a "type of person"? Cost-of-living is per-capita.

Cost of living doesn't increase linearly with the number of people in a residence - usually it's logarithmic (so two people per house is cheaper than one, which is more expensive than three).

Because two single programmers behave completely different than two programmers that happen to be married and have children. Different taxation, different activities, different emphasis of what is important and what is not.

I cannot stress enough how different my life was when I was single vs a married family man.

Why do people constantly group "married" and "has children" into one change, and then assume that it's being single that's the strange case? A two-income household containing two roommates vs. a married couple vs. an unmarried couple in a stable relationship don't look all that different economically. Adding children is what causes all the rebudgeting and tax-breaks and lifestyle changes. You can get away with just doing cost-of-living analysis once for "median parent" and once for "median non-parent" without just getting noise.

I just compared two cases. There are many more.

I can vouch for Vienna. It's an amazing city and it's getting more international by the day. It's very affordable still and has a great public transport system and airport.

Main downside are the Austrians there ;) But at 40% foreign born population that is changing :D

I live in Graz and prefer it over Vienna... though doubtless a portion of that preference is enabled by the fact that Vienna exists :-)

Oh Graz is awesome and even with it being such a tiny place it's still reachable for international people.

I think the problem that Graz has is that Austria is too small of a country to support multiple large cities and Vienna overshadows it. Switzerland has a similar problem but there is no city on the size of Vienna that would absorb everything.

Not only that, what often gets overlooked is that Vienna is the second largest German speaking metro area in the world actually.

Graz is nice to visit though (also great tech schools in Styria in general) and it's pretty close too so that's cool :)

> Kiev, the only European city in the bottom ten, performs better for health care and education but has a low stability score due to Ukraine’s ongoing conflict with Russia.

What? What is "low stability"?

Risk of war with Russia.

Risk of small stakes in the RussiaVsWestEuropUsia?

You might just be a useful statistic in the global real-politik with that sort of thinking...

Can anyone in Kiev confirm whether this is what local people feel, or is this just the way the west sees it?

I can. Many friends have left during last year or so. Not sure if this is the only reason, mostly it's just a wish to find a better place to live and raise kids.

Seems like an overdramatization. I'm not from Kiev but I do live in a Ukraine and I don't see many people finding this a problem. I also have a plenty of friends from Kiev, none of which plan to move out anytime soon; and certainly not because of the war situation.

There's no political or military tension like in the middle-east, and the risk of actual full-blown war with Russia is too small to affect the daily lives of people.

Some people move to other countries like Poland, but the main reason behind that is the better education and work opportunities.

I just returned from Kiev. There is a certain degree of uncertainty that local people feel, but it's mostly related to weak local economy rather than the war. It surprises me that The Economist rated the city so low -- as long as you stay in its central part it's a very nice European city -- beautiful, clean, with lots of cafes and restaurants and decent public transit.

Relevant for the HN crowd - Vienna at #2 in this list will likely also get much more interesting very soon as our new "Trudeau" just negotiated a substantial startup initiative.

Toronto and Vancouver both suffer from the same problem as SV. Housing is out of control and if you are a person below 25, it really hard to lay any routes and save some money at the same time. Toronto is an amazing city for young people (I enjoy it more than SF), but when it comes to Tech jobs, salaries are lagging, especially at the entry level.

I live in Melbourne. Seems quite livable. It's fairly big at about 50 miles across depending on how you measure it.

Can I measure it in miles?

About the economist intelligence unit "We are outspoken in our views. Unlike our sister company, The Economist newspaper, much of our work is bespoke for clients and remains confidential. But we share the same fierce passion for independence and integrity. Clients work with us because we are not afraid to tell them what we really think. We never pander to internal agendas or work to buttress some preconceived strategy. We have no vested interest in any specific recommendation—we do not undertake follow-on work to help clients to implement strategies or plan M&A. We just analyse the facts and present our conclusions. We believe that our clients execute better strategies as a result.

This is a confusing metric. If I compare two cities at the top of the list I know well and have spent much time in, Vancouver and Calgary, to other cities I know well, I have a difficult time explaining to myself why those are among the most livable cities in the world. Vancouver is a lovely city, if you have money. Calgary appeals to my mountain West upbringing, but it has most of the downsides of mountain West cities in the US, which are not insignificant.

Those cities are not unlivable by any means but "most livable" seems like a stretch. Obviously their measures are quite different than what some people might assume.

Yeah, "livable" is inherently tied to some kind of value system. It's kind of a useless metric unless they explain in detail their values. "Safety" and "environment" mean totally different things to totally different people. This would be much more interesting if they took, say, three different value systems and did three rankings.

> It's kind of a useless metric unless they explain in detail their values

It's a pity that the Economist didn't put a link right there in the first paragraph about that!

Yea they did but they also put it behind a link that requires registration.

Besides, the metric value changes depending on who you are and what kind of income you can generate based on the job you can obtain and what you value the most. This is why I never like articles claim to know what's best for everyone.

Happy to see Adelaide in there. It is a wonderful city.

Objectively I imagine Adelaide is actually the better city, for public transport and costs and such.

But Melbourne is just way more interesting. A much richer history, density and diversity of structures and services.

It's kinda interestig to read see this type of comparison, but it doesn't really give a good picture for the families living there or someone looking to shift into that city.

According to the footnote in chart, it only measures stablility, infrastructure, education, health care and environment. Is this in the context of a average family with an average income for that city? It's pretty vague.

I grew up in the southern part of suburban Melbourne before shifting to Europe. It was quite a livable city for me, but to get started and to establish yourself in Melbourne is very difficult.

I'm surprised Hamburg is the highest rated German city. I haven't spent much time in the country, so maybe some natives can educate me. Köln, Stuttgart, Dresden, and München were far more enjoyable.

Well, what is it that you enjoy?

Hamburg is much less conservative than all of the ones you listed, could be that they are too "Deutsch" for the economist ;)

I'm really surprised that Berlin isn't mentioned. Admittedly, I haven't spent much time in other German cities, but Berlin should be the best in cost of living and also in startups.

Economist is my favourite source of news but this ranking is completely BS.

Nah, Melbourne ranked #1 seems spot on :-D

I'm surprised Calgary didn't suffer in these rankings from its weakening economy and rising crime rate. I mean, things are still pretty good, but they're worse now than a year ago.

Calgary's average December temperature is −6.8 °C. That's a challenge compared to Melbourne or even Vancouver.

Don't know other cities but Istanbul definitely deserves its place in less liveable list.

Where can one get the full list? I downloaded the article and it doesn't have it...

Looks like you'll have to pay for it. The best I could find was this.

http://pages.eiu.com/rs/783-XMC-194/images/Liveability_Augus...

Yeah, same here, sucks, interested about the situation in Bay Area from a more 'impartial' point of view.

I find it odd they drop Sydney out of the top 10 due to terrorist threats but keep Toronto and Hamburg.

What terrorist activity has occurred in Toronto?

Few attempts I guess. I just figured in terms of being a target.

As many as in Sydney?

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I don't get how a city like Melbourne can score as highly as it does considering the state of LGBT laws in that country. Surely this has to be taken into consideration.

Because the laws are behind what the population thinks I'd suggest. Laws are not always an accurate indication of what the majority of people currently think, although in general this is probably true.

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