Tel Aviv is the world’s most expensive city | Hacker News Reader

Tel Aviv is the world’s most expensive city

economist.com

47 pointspaulpauper31 comments

Lived in Tel-Aviv most of my adult life. Anyone who lived there long enough would tell you it was a matter of time until it "wins" this title.

It also has awful public transportation and terrible housing market. It's still one of the most fun cities in the world: Good weather, amazing night life and cuisine, decent job market, walkable, Gay+420 friendly

I make a point to tell anyone who asks me about Israel that Tel-Aviv is the best city in the world for a vacation, but unless you're rich don't live there.

How many years since a religiously motivated killing at a pride parade?

I heard about one incident a few years ago. Were there more?

There was a stabbing at the Jerusalem parade in 2015. I don't recall one ever happening in Tel Aviv but I might be mistaken. The two cities are separated by a distance of 65 kilometers, 5-10 degrees Celsius, and 200 years of cultural change.

I’ve got to imagine there’s dozens of comparable cities and that humans are just hopelessly and wonderfully romantic about what they think is the best.

I don't think "awful public transportation and terrible housing market" is wonderfully romantic.

I'm very critical of the city and the country, but I've traveled across the US and most of western Europe, and have yet to find a comparable example.

I don't know what's the secret sauce, but I think it's somewhat correlated to Israel's disproportionate success in tech - only the currency in the high risk high reward equation is fun, and is fueled by the Israeli "chutzpa" culture.

I was curious about the fact that you characterized it as "has awful public transportation" and is also "walkable." Would you say if you live in the city center then the latter means the former doesn't matter too much then?

That is somewhat true. The main issue is getting out of/into the city center. For example, getting to the big tech park of tel aviv (Ramat HaHayal) can take over an hour with a bus. So people take cars, but then there's so much traffic and lack of parking, it also takes an hour. Not much for someone who lives in the US but you can essentially drive half of Israel in an hour.

It also makes visiting family , which is a big thing in Israeli culture and enabled by short distances, very annoying if you don't have a car.

Scooters and e-bikes "solved" a lot of these troubles inside the city, but infrastructure hadn't caught up - not enough bike lanes make it very dangerous and injuries and even deaths are not uncommon. The upcoming newly built intercity tram should theoretically also help.

Yes, it's walkable for your daily needs, and people normally do a lot of errands by walking as well. But not to work.

Also, the lack of bus service during Shabbat means everybody needs a car just to go see their family every Friday, which then means you're a car owner and more tempted to create traffic the rest of the week. Since 2019, Tel Aviv mayor used a loophole in the Shabbat law - by offering busses for free they are able to run during Shabbat, but the area covered is small.

Why hasn't tel-aviv made a metro yet? It's not the USA, there are many people from europe who have had a good experience with metros in their home countries, it's not poor and it's not Houston sized sprawling either.

I would imagine that excavation in Tel Aviv would be a huge pain, and previously there were a lot of security concerns with bunching people up in a metro. Perhaps now things have quieted down but the land has gotten very expensive.

Ah there is a metro plan! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Aviv_Metro

They're working on it. Excavation is indeed a pain, there's a lot of extra traffic recently due to the construction, and people complain about the noise too. But it's happening.

I don't expect it to help much with the Shabbat issue, but politics are hard to predict so we'll see.

I was surprised that San Francisco was not in the top ten, then the article explains that the index tracks products and services which I presume excluding housing cost. However, I am still surprised Los Angeles ranks higher than SF.

> However, I am still surprised Los Angeles ranks higher than SF.

Its a ranking of 173 major world cities; by population, San Francisco is somewhere near 650 in the world; it probably isn't even considered.

The population Tel Aviv is 0.46 million which is half of San Francisco’s (even if the rest of the Bay area is excluded)

Zurich has ~440k and its in the list.

If you move your mouse cursor over on top of the graph on economist.com, you can see that there is a bubble representing SF.

Like the parent comment, I was also surprised that LA was considered more expensive than SF.

Many of these indexes use area cost / area income as the inaffordability measure.

Lived in LA and SF. This article's research is poorly done. Ask 100 people who have been in both cities and 99 will say SF comes out significantly more expensive.

But how much more income do you make in SF? I think most of these measures are based on cost / income. Also you tend to be bound to US / CA wide pricing in SF beyond a few very local services, so you can take advantage of cheaper consumer good pricing from the large US market.

Site is not responding but it's hard to believe this - must not be taking into account income. This seems like a more reasonable ranking (HK, Vancouver, etc):

https://www.geographyrealm.com/these-cities-are-the-most-una...

Top 10 most expensive cities according to this article:

1. Tel Aviv

2. Paris

3. Singapore

4. Zurich

5. Hong Kong

6. New York

7. Geneva

8. Copenhagen

9. Los Angeles

10. Osaka

Surprising Sydney isn't to be found on this list.

14th

Where's San Fran?!

No mention of London? Strange.

I'm not that surprised, the pound is still fairly weak compared to historical averages which is likely to have knocked it down international rankings like this.

The only one of these on the list I have any experience with though is Paris, the main thing I remember is that eating out there seemed to be a lot more expensive than London for the rough equivalent and an amount that would get you an ok place to stay in London got me absolute garbage in Paris. But this is all vague personal experience anecdotes.

Meanwhile I'm not surprised to see two Swiss cities in the list. I live in London, my brothers live in Switzerland in a city 1/80th the population, and I feel I can live like a king compared to the prices over there. And everything's privatised, so you have to pay even more than normal European standards.

This index has SF at #3 and Houston at #4 in North American cities? Methodology must be quite flawed...

I seriously doubt Tel Aviv is more expensive than NYC on housing/rent costs alone.

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