3 Out Of 10 'Best Cities in the World' Are Swiss

Posted by: Tim Halbur

28 April 2009 - 2:00pm

The 2009 Mercer Quality of Living Survey is dominated by Swiss, German and Austrian cities, while Vancouver hangs on to fourth place, the only city in the Americas to crack the top 10.

"French and British cities fare middling in the 2009 Mercer Quality of Living Survey. Paris drops from 32nd to 33rd place, while London is still only placed 38th. Birmingham and Glasgow are jointly at 56. In the US, the highest-ranking entry is Honolulu at position 29. Singapore (26) is the top-scoring Asian city followed by Tokyo at 35. Baghdad, ranking 215, remains at the bottom of the table.

The rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6, and Baghdad 14.4. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city with an index score of 100. Mercer’s Quality of Living ranking covers 215 cities and is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments.

This year’s ranking also identifies the cities with the best infrastructure based on electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport provision, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports."

Full Story: Swiss and German cities dominate top 10 of 'best' cities in the world

Source: Citymayors.com, April 28, 2009

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Tiresome and predictable rankings

Submitted by chrisinsobe on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 20:57.

"Mercer’s Quality of Living ranking covers 215 cities and is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments."

That says it all.

These city rankings are pretty tiresome, mostly useless, and almost always predictable. Unless you are a banker or corporate lawyer or maybe a career US State Department bureaucrat with a nice squeaky-clean yuppie family and can afford the astronomical housing costs common to all the high-ranked cities plus maybe enjoy a $500-a-day per diem, these rankings are irrelevant. As for the "best" places to live, its all in the eye of the beholder and one's lifestyle preferences. While many German cities populate this list, for example, my personal favorite is Berlin which, probably in the opinion of Mercer, ranks somewhere near Baghdad. As for Vancouver... yes, a nice city but where a 500-square-foot apartment costs half a million.

chrisinsobe (presently working in.. I'm sure, low-ranked... Dubai)

Berlin is No. 16...!

Submitted by chrisinsobe on Thu, 04/30/2009 - 02:21.

I just read read the whole list. Berlin is No. 16. I'm genuinely surprised, though personally, I'd live there anyday before any of those cities ranked higher. It's still all about personal preferences, however. Berlin, like any other city on this or any one else's "best" list, is not for everyone.

chrisinsobe

sigh

Submitted by travis.cleveland on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 14:37.

It is just me, or is this sort of comparative ranking endeavor pretty useless? If other people had done the evaluations, they surely would have turned out different.