These lists also often ignore the weather, which makes a huge difference to what most people consider to be "livable".
Nordic European winters are horrible, and no amount of amenities can compensate.
Nordic European winters are horrible, and no amount of amenities can compensate.
But a very cold winter is nothing compared to a very hot summer. Look at how many people die in heat waves. Rarely does a cold snap result in more than a handful of deaths, and most of those will be traffic-related. Heat waves can result in hundreds dead very easily. I'll take a Canadian or Norwegian winter over a Texas summer any day.
Parts of Canada are actually about to mandate air conditioning (aka active cooling) in new buildings in recognition of the danger that summer heat can pose in Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/heat-dome-retrofit-building-c...
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-t...
> The study found that extreme heat and cold killed 5.08 million people on an average every year from 2000-2019. Of this, 4.6 million deaths on an average occurred annually due to extreme cold while 0.48 million deaths occurred due to extreme heat.
"In Canada, more than 80 people die each year from over-exposure to the cold."
https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/public-health-topics/co...
In Canada and northern US, you expect the cold and plan accordingly.
In sub-Saharan Africa, you expect the heat and plan accordingly.
It's when the conditions flip-flop (hot Canada, cold Africa) that people run into trouble.
Goes right back to how subjective livability is. The above statement might be true for you. For me I'm unhappy at anything below 80F and downright miserable below 60F. Any city that gets weather below freezing is completely out, regardless of all other factors. Live is too short to spend most of it freezing. All the top 5 in this economist list are freezing places, hard nope from me to all of them.
Yup... Belgium (and that's not even totally north), where I'm originally from, has 199 days of rain per year. Out of the 166 days left, half of them exhibit a gray sky. Wife and I packed our stuff, put our baby in the car and left for a better life along the Mediterranean sea side six years ago: zero regret.
Sophia Antipolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Antipolis) is definitely an attempt to build a Silicon Valley in Europe but why did it not work? It was pushed and funded extensively by the government, it doesn't feel natural after all. In the Bay Area, the government was there too, no delusion but private sector has shaped California for about 150 years. What always stroke me is the urban planning: the houses and roads are big and pretty even if they look old sometimes. It might be part of the Californian dream: a big job, a big car, a big home, etc. Also the administration and mentality is different, more Republican perhaps?
The Mediterranean climate is very different from what you get in Central Europe, or (worse, as far as rain goes) the UK and Ireland.
"Caelum crebris imbribus ac nebulis foedum; asperitas frigorum abest" – "The sky is obscured by constant rain and cold, but it never gets bitterly cold."
(Tacitus about Britain in 98 AD. Not much has changed.)
I personally like the weather on the southern slopes of the Alps the most. Southern Austria, South Tyrol, Slovenia. Pleasant enough to be almost-Mediterranean, but not scorching hot in the summer and still retaining four distinct seasons.
If you like such weather, places like Trieste or Ljubljana can be fairly welcoming and with low cost of living, though you need to forget about Silicon Valley levels of compensation.
By contrast, many large cities in North America have extreme seasonality. With meters of snow in the winter, and unbearable heat in the summer. Looking at you NYC.