It seems that more often the various rankings that compare life style across countries or cities use at least some metric related to the connectedness of their populations. Whether they measure adoption of mobile technology, Internet infrastructure or number of servers hosted, their attempt reflects an important reality of our times: the success of a city or country depends in some measure on the ability by its citizens to participate in the service economy, which is shifting rapidly to the virtual space.
The Washington Post has a comparison of the various levels of broadband access available in various industrialized countries. In Japan’s Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future, the main argument is Japan’s super fast infrastructure allowing Internet users to enjoy a service 30 times faster than the one available in the United States. While super fast Internet access enables new applications, the total population with such levels of service is also an important factor as only with large number of subscribers there will be incentives to create such applications. I found a more recent version of the statistics cited by The Washington Post in Wikipedia’s List of countries by broadband users:
This article [...]
One of my first posts in this blog described a simple method to exchange valuable information among global citizens. The method suggested in global citizen was never adopted by anyone but the idea didn’t die. This past week our team released a Facebook application called My City, which has the potential to accomplish the same goal.
Since I have a global audience it is important to mention that Facebook was the platform of choice for its widespread adoption and ability to accept applications from others. If you haven’t heard about it in your region, chances are that other social networks dominate the market. Still, you should be able to join.
The application itself works on a very simple premise: rather than trusting city guides that tell you the best places to conduct your day to day activities, we allow you to see what your friends recommend. Exploring all facets of city life from the perspective of those you already trust can be entertaining at first, but we believe it can be taken even further. Consider the following two scenarios:
You have visitors from abroad and want to take them to a hip place, maybe a [...]
I’m sure is not because Monocle released their most liveable cities report just a month ago, but now is The Economist releasing their Liveability rankings with the article Where the grass is greener. While Monocle’s report came in the form of a wonderful edition, perfectly written and documented, the Economist Intelligence Unit barely delivers a table with the rankings without much analysis behind. True, Monocle used criteria such “fair balance of sunny and warm days” and “availability of drinks after hours”, but the overall delivery convinced. According to The Economist
The survey takes over 40 factors into consideration which are weighted across five different categories: Stability; Healthcare; Culture & Environment; Education; and Infrastructure. Across the survey a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data are used, which are combined to give an overall Quality of Life Index rating.
.
However I wasn’t able to find such factors anywhere, not even after paying for the full report. Anyway, this are the top 10 according to them, nothing that we haven’t seen before:
Vancouver, Canada
Melbourne, Australia
Vienna, Austria
Perth, Australia
Toronto, Canada
Adelaide, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Copenhagen, Denmark
Geneva, Switzerland
Zurich, Switzerland
Still, I never get tired of ranking cities and feeling a bit proud on behalf [...]
Half-drunk with a bottle of Casillero del Diablo, sitting on the floor in the middle of Plaza Mayor, Madrid, having had a great lunch at Museo Del Jamon, and enjoying a spontaneus “Concierto de Aranjuez” interpreted by an anonymous street musician, it felt very close to the most perfect vacation moment I’d ever had. It was 4 years ago and I still remember the realization at the time of how that moment would not fade away. No fancy hotels, no tours booked that day, no galleries to visit in the area and no intention of standing up any time soon.
As I try to deconstruct that moment, I now know that should one of the elements of such experience had been missing, it wouldn’t had transcended. So I’ll take a risk and generalize that a memorable experience has to appeal your senses in many ways. The dry yet tickling sensation on your palate, the stone floor warmed up by the sun rays, a belly full with exquisite cured hams and a well-known melody enhanced by flawless up-tempo execution, they all contributed to such memorability.
Monocle has an article called Good Hood, in which Tyler Brûlé & [...]
