Global Culture

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.

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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:

1. Vancouver, Canada
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Vienna, Austria
4. Perth, Australia
5. Toronto, Canada
6. Adelaide, Australia
7. Sydney, Australia
8. Copenhagen, Denmark
9. Geneva, Switzerland
10. Zurich, Switzerland

Still, I never get tired of ranking cities and feeling a bit proud on behalf of those cities that I’ve come to know one way or another.

Update: after corresponding with the Editor of the report at the Economist Intelligence Unit I was given access to the full report which documents their methodology. The ranking is based on 5 categories:

• Stability (25%): crime, conflict
• Healthcare (20%): private & public healthcare
• Culture & Environment (25%): weather, freedoms, culture, food, goods
• Education (10%): private & public education
• Infrastructure (20%): public transportation, international connections, housing, services, telecomminications

As suspected, their analysis is far more methodic but is intended to help companies planning to expand make decisions about how to compensate workers being transferred.

The survey was conducted in June 2007 so if you’re curious about the ranking of your city, send me a note and I’ll share the data.