Zürich is a beautiful and well-organized city, for example, but every single time I've been there I've found out that its quiet translates into a boringness I've seldom experienced anywhere else. For me, a man in his late thirties who has no plans to have kids and form a normative family, it's a living nightmare.
But seriously, should they be skewed more single 30s guys with no commitments? Should they be skewed towards the things that benefit the majority of people who are not single 30s guys.
Saying this as a former 'single guy in his 30s' myself.
And talking about catering to a specific type, Frankfurt and Zürich are way more catered toward a very normative idea of family and individuals A city like Berlin by these standards is deemed less liveable, but some of its flaws is what makes it way more humanly liveable. Also, Berlin has so many areas that are completely different from one another that here you can find the millionaire tech startupper with a villa at Wannsee eating out at Hasir in Kreuzberg next to deadbeat students. That’s more my idea of psychologically livable. But yeah, if you’re into skiing, banking, and fancy wines I guess Zürich’s fine.
Personally I also find very well organized, well functioning Western European cities quite boring. I would take Athens over Frankfurt any day - but of course the 'objective' index says I would be wrong to do so.
The Patek Philippe-wearing jet set, towards whom most of the advertising on The Economist is aimed at, is going to have very different ideas of livability.
Whether you’re a teen, in your thirties, or in your eighties.
If you’re city doesn’t cater for this range, it simply isn’t a great city, but rather a playground for a particular type.
The answer is the analysis gets tons of press, people get worked up over the rankings, share the link, more eyeballs, more arguments, more eyeballs —> more ad revenue.
It’s the same reason starts up do blog posts of analyses, it’s free PR.
Pretty clearly it works based on the HN discussion alone.