TRADE OFF: BEST CITIES IN THE WORLD TO LIVE

Posted on June 14, 2003 by Dave Pollard
world
There are at least a dozen surveys done each year that purport to tell you what the best city is to live in. Unfortunately, generally, the best cities also seem to be the most expensive. So I decided to develop a composite ranking of cities’ quality of life and cost of living. I took two recent quality of life survey rankings, and two recent cost of living survey rankings (cheapest to most expensive), and computed the average combined ranking. Here are the results:

CITY
 QL
 CL
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40 		AUCKLAND, NZ
VANCOUVER, CA
SYDNEY, AU
MELBOURNE, AU
FRANKFURT, DE
WELLINGTON, NZ
PERTH, AU
TORONTO, CA
LUXEMBOURG, LU
MUNICH, DE
VIENNA, AT
BRISBANE, AU
MONTREAL, CA
OTTAWA, CA
AMSTERDAM, NL
BRUSSELS, BE
DUSSELDORF, DE
HELSINKI, FI
ADELAIDE, AU
COPENHAGEN, DK
HAMBURG, DE
STOCKHOLM, SE
CALGARY, CA
ZURICH, CH
BERLIN, DE
NURNBERG, DE
GENEVA, CH
BERN, CH
LYON, FR
MADRID, ES
SAN FRANCISCO, US
HONOLULU, US
OSLO, NO
DUBLIN, IE
SEATTLE, US
PARIS, FR
WINSTON SALEM, US
LOS ANGELES, US
BOSTON, US
WASHINGTON, US		 7
3
4
13
6
23
21
19
18
11
2
30
25
28
12
17
16
9
37
8
27
14
34
1
24
26
5
10
40
47
20
22
15
36
32
31
41
35
44
48 		1
12
15
8
17
2
5
11
14
22
31
4
9
6
23
18
20
27
3
32
13
26
7
42
21
19
44
42
16
10
37
36
43
24
28
34
25
38
33
35

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11 Responses to TRADE OFF: BEST CITIES IN THE WORLD TO LIVE

  1. Amanda says:
    June 14, 2003 at 10:47

    And where is Buffalo New York, HUH??? HUH???? *laughs*

  2. Rob Paterson says:
    June 14, 2003 at 11:01

    Now don’t be mean – Buffalo has Channel 7 Eye Witness News and Goldie doing the fund raising for PBS. It’s also close to the wine region in Ontario

  3. Andrew Collins says:
    June 14, 2003 at 16:55

    Could you make your original QL and CL data available, or post links to where you obtained these data? Thanks!

  4. Christopher Key says:
    June 14, 2003 at 21:01

    That’s why they call it Vangroovy!

  5. Doug Alder says:
    June 14, 2003 at 21:19

    Ontario wine region? Hah! THat should be Ontario Whine Region :-) If you want REAL wine come to BC :-) Your calcs must be off Dabe – vancouver is definitely #1 (lol)

  6. silly me says:
    June 14, 2003 at 23:39

    WINSTON SALEM, US???

  7. Dave Pollard says:
    June 15, 2003 at 20:08

    Andrew: I copied the data from several sources into Excel spreadsheets and foolishly didn’t save the URL’s. I think I can track them down if you give me a couple of days. Answer will show up here.

  8. Camilo says:
    June 17, 2003 at 09:19

    Wisnton Salem? Quality of life?I beg to differ. Seriously.On the other hand, I want to live either in SF or Seattle, so it seems I am in the right track.

  9. Life Tenant says:
    June 28, 2003 at 08:37

    I mean, Geneva? Have these people actually tried to have a stimulating life in Geneva? Yes, the lake is beautiful, but Calvin still reigns there…. I love lists of favorites, which always have an arbitrary quality regardless of how much quantification the list-makers conjure up.

  10. mrG says:
    July 24, 2003 at 22:56

    Another quality of these arbitrary qualities is the difference between bad data, data about badness, and simple lack of data.For example, I’m frequently drawn into this debate over Toronto vs Hongkong, and when I sought to settle it once and for all by seeking poverty, crime, employment, education and other metrics for comparison (starting from the UN lists) I quickly discovered that there were no free online sources for any such stats for many Asian locations.Evidence of absense is not the same as absense of evidence, and not to wave any fingers of racism except to say there’s at the very least a bias introduced into these lists by the channels of information sharing — and even after more probing and digging, I still have to keep my nationalist mouth shut since I still don’t know how all these caucasian towns really stack up against the bulk of the non-white locales.

  11. David Papadopoulos says:
    July 26, 2003 at 04:19

    I understand that #1 in each column is either the most desirable (QL) or cheapest (CL). In that case, cites ranking low in both columns would be close to ideal. Auckland is the only city with single-digit ranking in both columns. Almost everywhere else, quality comes at a pretty steep price, which means no access for a lot of people. So where do they find quality? Or are most of us living in misery?

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