The World's Best Places to Live 2008

[david927]

Living in Zurich is like going out with a beautiful woman who has nothing to say. The best day is the day you get together. The second best day is the day you split up.

[davidw]

In this day and age, these kinds of things should come with a flash app with sliders to control weights for things like climate, so that you can do your own rankings. Frankfurt? No way.

[Retric]

I agree, but I think there is a positive correlation between specific climates and getting stuff done. Where you can blow off working to go surfing and live cheaply it's a lot harder to keep going but when it’s cold outside it seems to motivate people to keep going. (Or get depressed.)

[steveplace]

Static pages for each picture = more pageclicks = more bs statistics to show your advertisers.

[nir]

... In which BusinessWeek fills some pages and a consulting firm gets some PR by pretending it's possible to quantify things like "quality of life".

(People who take such articles seriously deserve to live in Zurich ;))

[rw]

I recommend the Big Island of Hawai'i for an "extended working period." You get an internet connection (albeit a laggy one), a laptop, privacy, fucking excellent coffee, and beautiful views of jungle and ocean. Result: you finish your novel or software project.

[corecirculator]

I agree, although life in general seems to move at a leisurely pace there, so the "urgency" factor in work is not there. OTOH, the fruit juices there do taste much better than the supermarket ones in mainland US...

[amohr]

...macadamia nut coffee... yes. A thousand times, yes. But I do remember reading an essay a while back about what makes SV so popular and a major point was the fact that it was beautiful, but not too beautiful. He contends that the landscape of Hawai'i is beautiful to the point of being a distraction.

Though, I don't think I could turn down an offer to spend some time working on any of the larger islands.

[krschultz]

Honolulu? I lived in Honolulu for 2 years and it sucked. About the only thing going for it is the beach, but you can get that in a lot of places. Meanwhile the place is overrun with poverty, drug use, and high cost of living for basically no culture. I feel like the editor of this list said "give me 23 cities no one else has listed before" instead of the actual best places. New York City? San Fran? Boulder? Singapore? Come on

[steveplace]

I think it deliberately left out most US cities (Honolulu is the only one I remember).

Businessweek's "Best of" lists are normally crap anyways... it still got me on their site, though.

[mandarin]

Generally agree with this list as a whole especially considering I live in one of them ;) However, I do not agree with some German entries on this list. Düsseldorf ranked 6th?!?

[greyman]

How could Berlin get there?! Passionless, uninteresting city...(IMHO of course, sorry Berliners!)

[msluyter]

The results do seem a bit strange. I'm curious to know the exact method they used for their evaluation. The accompanying text mentions criteria such as "level of traffic congestion, air quality, and personal safety," but given that Honolulu came in at 28, they couldn't have given much weight to cost of living, could they?

Also, I'm guessing crime as a metric probably skews the results away from American cities, generally. America's per capita murder rate is much higher than european countries', for example. I think those of us who are upper/middle class are often insulated from the crime and social problems that exist -- usually in areas we never venture -- in certain portions of our cities and thus forget that, taken as a whole, our cities may not be as nice as we imagine them to be.

[froo]

As an Australian, I find it odd that Perth didn't rate as high as either Sydney or Melbourne which came in as 10th and 17th respectively. Perth ranked 21st overall but wasn't shown on the list associated with this link.

Sure, Perth does not have the nightlife or the population density that either of those 2 cities have (1.1 million vs ~4 and ~3.5 respectively) but then again, Perth has one of the lowest crime rates in the country, the lowest unemployment rate, pollution is nonexistant, fantastic weather (its warm and sunny about 300-320 days a year) and they're currently undergoing a resources boom that is the envy of the rest of the country.

The guidelines for defining quality of life can be found on the Mercer Consulting site which conducted the survey. Link below for convenience. http://www.mercer.com/referencecontent.htm?idContent=1306640

I'd be curious to see what the weightings were for each of the factors, as this list seems a little strange.

Full Disclosure: I'm a resident of Perth, but I've lived in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane within Australia.

[gibsonf1]

I think their metrics need some help as I've been to most of these cities and I can't imagine many of them outranking a city like San Francisco.

[david927]

I've lived in SF (and Berkeley and Oakland) and I've lived in Zurich. There's no competition. Zurich would win in a heartbeat by anyone who is impartial. My point above is that it's like heaven -- everything is white and boring. But in a competition, let's be honest, heaven is going to win.

[haasted]

The picture of Copenhagen is actually from the Freetown Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania), which is located inside Copenhagen.

While Christiania is a huge tourist attraction for Copenhagen, I don't think it's fair to use its picture as a representation of Copenhagen.

[yummyfajitas]

From the article: "Cities are compared to New York as the base city, with an index score of 100."

I think this reveals as much as the rankings do.

[ConradHex]

Maybe, or maybe they're just using it as a numeric reference. Something has to be 100, right?

[river_styx]

Summary: Switzerland good, U.S. not so much.

[locacorten]

After three years of living in Toronto, I'm still shocked as why people rank Toronto so high. Go live in Toronto for awhile and then tell me what you think about:

1. Pollution 2. Traffic 3. Taxes

I'll stop here since I don't want to get all worked up.

[run4yourlives]

People like Hogtown because it's like a mini New York. You get all the benefits of living in a "big time" city, but you can still have a house and a yard and live the suburban dream. (For now at least).

After being raised in Toronto and now living in Vancouver, via Calgary, I definitely prefer where I am now, with the exception of the rain.

[shawndrost]

Hey, Honolulu's at #28, top of the US! If anyone wants a leg up in moving over here, let me know, I know a few startups that are hiring, and I'll tell you about the (small) tech community.

[jm4]

Interesting. I saw an article- I think on HN- about the most expensive cities in the world and many of these were on that list as well.

[Chocobean]

well you're also making more money in those top cities, right?

[rokhayakebe]

Honolulu? Obviously, the people who did this survey did not spend much time there. Maybe Maui.

[run4yourlives]

Good God Maui's even worse... Kona is your best bet for Hawaii.

[truebosko]

Here's to Waterloo (Ontario) in ... 2012 or so being on that list :)