The world’s most liveable cities in 2023
economist.com
economist.com
Assuming you're anyway not contemplating moving to Nairobi or Tehran I don't think this really gives much useful info as you can't really say you'd like life in a city with a slightly better score than another, it only matter if the gap is large.
E.g. I spent 8 years living in Vienna followed by 10 years in Berlin (a bit further below in the rating) and I don't feel my quality of life is at all lower here (I much prefer living in Berlin)- the main difference I notice is that Vienna is much better at cleaning up the trash from public spaces than Berlin, and a smaller city is generally easier to navigate.
[1] https://sqmresearch.com.au/weekly-rents.php?region=nsw-Sydne...
They’re nice to live “if” you could afford to.
Everyone loves whining about finding a place to rent in both places, but in Berlin it's about finding anything at all whereas in Zurich it's usually about finding something cheap and ideally in a desirable Kreis 3 or Kreis 4 neighborhood. Yes it's competitive, but you will find something with realistic expectations + budget.
NB: I don't earn a big tech salary either. If you land a Google/Meta/IBM/Disney/adjacent job, the (rental) housing market should not give you any headaches.
> Berlin where housing is not too expensive, but almost non available to newcomers even on skilled jobs?
It's not available to long term residents either. In Berlin one has to compile and update monthly the application portfolio. Good luck having a landlord who'll issue debt free certificate more often than once a year. Think will get away without debt free certificate? Someone else will have it, sorry.
Say you are single, have some experience and get low-balled into a CHF 100k contract. Not counting 13th salary this translates to CHF 7.7k per month gross / CHF 6k net (before health insurance). I.e. at up to 1/3 of your monthly net you can spend up to 2k per month on an apartment. There are plenty of those to choose from inside Zurich city, even if some might be small for the price or have other drawbacks. You can find cheaper/bigger/nicer easily by expanding your search radius to the (extremely well-connected) suburbs.
Only if you're a relentless hunter. Otherwise it looks more like >2.5k CHF monthly. 400-500 CHF monthly on health insurance, 500 CHF monthly for random tickets, fees, fines, and other "disciplinary measures". Suddenly you find yourself being poor in Switzerland. Being poor among rich hurts multiplied.
Depends. Sure, it hurts your ego being "poor" in a super rich country, but that has the advantages of being safe everywhere, not being stabbed for wearing a nice watch, having access to the best medical care in the world, a reliable insurance and justice system for when things go wrong, clean air and drinking/bathing water, a high trust society where you're not afraid of being scammed everywhere or leaving your door open at night, not afraid that anyone will shoot you in your school, etc.
Some people would rather be dirt poor in Zurich, than filthy rich in Zimbabwe.
Ultimately it's supply and demand. It's the consequence of everyone wanting to be a latte sipping WFH laptop worker, instead of a contractor/handyman.
Also, worth considering that locksmiths charge crazy money because they basically work shit hours and have to deal with shitty customers. You're basically on call 24/7, on the road a lot, and most of your customers who call you are party people who realize they lost their keys when they get home from the bar/club at 2AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and call you desperately trying to get into their house, and once you do open their door they start to bitch, moan and can even get aggressive refusing to pay, because you're charging too much money for "5 minutes of work". Sure, maybe you make a solid thousand Euros that night, but you basically fucked your weekend. Not great work/life balance IMHO, which is why not so many do it.
In life you often have to choose the least worst option for you out of two bad ones if you want to survive. It's rare to have your cake and eat it too, especially when it comes to housing in desirable metro areas and you not being wealthy. Beggars can't be choosers.
Granted, nobody put a gun to your head and said you must live in Zurich, London, Dublin, Berlin, or any other city with a housing shortage, it's your own voluntary decision to do that, but doing so you must be mindful of the compromises and sacrifices such a choice requires.
I heard this in Germany a lot in various circumstances while seeing on my monthly payslips deductions totalling well over 40%.
> nobody put a gun to your head and said you must live in Zurich, London, Dublin, Berlin
I didn't force myself to that bloody miserable country either, but got qualified job and was granted relocation there. At which point I'm not a beggar anymore and can start posing even a smallest demand?
That's the situation with social welfare states. They're not the USA. Everyone contributes as much as they can while receiving benefits per their needs. It's a social contract where people, for better or for worse, give up their individual opportunities for wealth generation, for the sake of collective wealth and welfare safety nets. Germany is not the place to move to, if you want to make wealth and pay as little taxes as possible.
>I didn't force myself to that bloody miserable country either, but got qualified job and was granted relocation there.
You could have gotten a qualified job in any other country, nobody dragged you into forced labor to Germany kicking and screaming I assume. Once you saw the situation you could have packed up and moved.
> At which point I'm not a beggar anymore and can start posing even a smallest demand?
You are free to make as many demands as you want, most likely nobody in Germany will care. If you want change, the best way is to vote with your feet and move to a country that's already built on your beliefs (tax heavens). Trying to change a country, as na individual, is like trying to move the planet.
The third bomb, a classic, bringing up comparisons with the USA. Listen, I'm EU citizen relocating within EEA and I don't care about your US fetish or complex. I turned around and moved away indeed. Now Germany will be more preoccupied in vetting boat immigrants. I wish they'll find enough qualified people ready to give up their individual opportunities for wealth generation, while repeatedly being moved back at the end of the queue to the benefits they need! Sounds like a lovely deal.
I was trying to explain things to you respectfully, and using the US was an easy way to exemplify an extreme, and you go straight to the throat with bullshit accusations. Lovely. Cheers mate!
Obviously. People and individuals value completely different things for their personal quality of life than whatever variables, weights and values The Economist uses to calculate their scores.
Their formula constantly puts Vienna at the top, a city which also comes out at the top of the least friendly cities for expats surveys, which is an important metric for many expats.
I don't give a damn how livable a city is on paper in some random statistic, and especially if the computed livability is disproportionately biased towards the locals and against the foreigners (FPÖ, the far right party in Austria founded by Nazis, keeps getting 22% to 32% votes lately, and since it's disproportionately difficult to become a citizen to vote them out, compared to all other EU countries, so you'll be stuck in "taxation without representation" limbo, working to fund the coffers of a country where nearly a third of citizens hate your kind)
My point is, livability means far more for most people than whatever The Economist measures, and I'm tired their trope keeps being regurgitated every year everywhere like it's some ground truth on livability. It's not. Livability means so much more, that The Economist doesn't talk about.
Check Austrian tech wages and number of successful Austrian tech companies to see what I mean. Anti-immigrant policies and conservative attitudes towards foreigners, cut both ways. There's a reason big-tech have offices in Switzerland and Germany but not in Austria.
Besides ETH, low corporate income taxes and one of the most secretive banking systems ... what? On open minded society? You've obviously never been to Switzerland. Swirzerland is one of the most cohesive and closed societies in the world.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it is norm for significant majority of countries in the world. Personally, I think that non-citizens should be allowed to vote on local elections (up to the city level), as they're impacted by local policies as residents, but on national level it is ok if only citizens can vote.
In Austria that's not the case. Any talks about easing up the restrictions on gaining citizenship, allowing dual citizenship or removing mandatory military service for citizens, end up smothered quickly by nationalistic and populist arguments along the lines of "foreigners should have to walk through glass to prove they're worthy for the privilege of becoming one of us".
Becoming a citizen in the UK or Belgium is a rubber stamp in comparison.
Citizenship (able to be gained after ~6 years of residency) is required for national elections.
Need to correct that the following is how this works in Iceland:
- Icelandic citizen, at least 18 years of age with legal domicile in the municipality in question
- They are either Finnish, Norwegian, Danish or Swedish citizens and fulfill later half of first requirement
- Any other citizen of another state that has had residency in Iceland for 3 years consecutively and fulfills the later half of the first requirement.
So any scandinavian, of age, who moves their domicile to Iceland can immediatly participate in the municipality votes, while others require a 3 year wait.
But for Vienna specifically, it has a sizable Turkish population as well (didn’t find a chart about ethnicity-based geographics). I also think (having visited it, but not having lived there, but a culturally similar capital) that while there are definitely some stereotype issues, it is definitely less pronounced in capitals where people actually can occasionally meet with people of color (certain ethnicities are extremely rare in this part of Europe) - but I can’t answer it any more than that.
And the OECD argues that major world cities often have more in common with each other than other cities and towns in their own countries, in both demographics and challenges, and I find Vienna to be less of a world city in the demographic respect.
Exactly. Just like how Bitpanda and NXP used to relocate foreign workers and their families to Austria, then fire them when some shit hit the fan, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Moving countries with your family, especially to ones where you have no connections/family/support network and don't speak the language, is incredibly risky unless you're very well off or very talented in a skill that's in high demand where you move.
Like you said, you and your family are at the mercy of your line manager, at least for the fist few years till you get enough credit to qualify for social support and build a support network, so foreign workers tend to put up with way more overtime and unreasonable demands, because they don't want to risk loosing their jobs so soon after investing huge amounts of effort, time and money in relocating their families.
???
Who is this list meant for? Seems kind of odd to penalize France because of pension protests
Am an American so might be lacking details, but my understanding is that Macron decided to raise the retirement age which was highly unpopular, and people were pissed off because of it? How do those protests make France "less livable"? If anything, it makes it more livable by my book.
Seems like Economist is just airing political grievances. Usually whenever I see these lists (e.g. "livability index", "democracy index", etc), the list maker shuffles around the top 10-20 countries in order to grind some political axe
Especially if it's my car. If these guys want to burn property so badly, why don't they bring their own cars to the area and burn them, in a sort of political protest burning man fashion?
I am one of these suckers.
Fixed it for you. Source: have worked with people.
1. Vienna, Austria
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
3. Melbourne, Australia
4. Sydney, Australia
5. Vancouver, Canada
6. Zurich, Switzerland
7. Calgary, Canada
8. Geneva, Switzerland
9. Toronto, Canada
10. Osaka, Japan
11. Auckland, New Zealand
12. Adelaide, Australia
13. Perth, Australia
14. Helsinki, Finland
15. Tokyo, Japan
16. Brisbane, Australia
17. Frankfurt, Germany
18. Berlin, Germany
19. Luxembourg
20. Amsterdam, Netherlands
Top 10 within the US:
1. Honolulu (overall ranking: 25)
2. Atlanta (overall ranking: 33)
3. Pittsburgh (overall ranking: 34)
4. Seattle (overall ranking: 36)
5. Washington, D.C. (overall ranking: 38)
6. Miami (overall ranking: tied for 39)
7. Chicago (overall ranking: tied for 39)
8. Boston (overall ranking: 46)
9. Portland, Oregon (overall ranking: 48)
10. San Francisco (overall ranking: 49)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2023/06/21/ran...
Hardship indices are useful. Beijing was considered a no-hardship posting by the state department but they had to bring it back a hard ship bonus circa 2015 because of the air pollution. Not sure where it is now, but QOL effects living in some places is real.
Point.