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Vancouver is a lovely city, and kind of reminds me of San Francisco.
The brother of a friend of mine moved to Melbourne, Australia right after college, and never came back to the States. He married and now has grown Aussie children.
Several Oz choices in the list, as well as Swiss and Austrian cities. I have no idea of the cost of living in Australia or New Zealand, but I know Switzerland is pricey.
Most live-able? Vancouver is a real NICE city. But, part of live-able means cost of living, and being affordable to all of its residents. From everything I've heard about Vancouver, it has an enormous homeless problem and rents/housing is sky high.
Than again, I think sometimes these types of lists aren't intended for people of average means, but more intended for people with a lot of money and want to really LIVE and have cool things to SPEND ON if they do.
How's the weather in Vancouver? Never been, but can I assume that it gets very cold there? Do they take that into consideration?
It's one of the milder cities in Canada as far as winter goes. You won't get the 20 or 30 below temperatures like Montreal. Precipitation more often is in the form of rain or drizzle versus snow. Quite a bit of greyness, and not just in winter. Personally, I don't view weather as one of Vancouver's strongest points. I always found it too grey and dreary for my liking.
Most live-able? Vancouver is a real NICE city. But, part of live-able means cost of living, and being affordable to all of its residents. From everything I've heard about Vancouver, it has an enormous homeless problem and rents/housing is sky high.
Than again, I think sometimes these types of lists aren't intended for people of average means, but more intended for people with a lot of money and want to really LIVE and have cool things to SPEND ON if they do.
Yeah, affordability doesn't seem to be a factor in these surveys, does it? And like you said, that is part of "liveability" for many of us. Maybe the people who do these surveys are independently wealthy, or have jobs flitting about the globe on somebody else's tab doing surveys
The top ten are:
Vancouver, Canada
Melbourne, Australia
Vienna, Austria
Geneva, Switzerland
Perth, Australia
Adelaide, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Zurich, Switzerland
Toronto, Canada
Calgary, Canada
All places with housing costs that are pretty high or even severely unaffordable. Perhaps they don't look at housing though.
But then, you don't really know a place til you actually live there for a few years, working at an average job, living in an average area.
Most live-able? Vancouver is a real NICE city. But, part of live-able means cost of living, and being affordable to all of its residents. From everything I've heard about Vancouver, it has an enormous homeless problem and rents/housing is sky high.
Than again, I think sometimes these types of lists aren't intended for people of average means, but more intended for people with a lot of money and want to really LIVE and have cool things to SPEND ON if they do.
No Australian City would be on the list if "Live and have cool things to spend on" were a criteria in the survey. Just my opinoin.
I don't like this ranking because they seem to favor cities based on the country they're in. Canada and Australia are generally considered well rounded countries data-wise. Vancouver has a major rain and cloudiness problem, and of course known for being expensive and attracted Canada's homeless and drug addicts to its streets. Australia has beautiful beaches, better weather, higher employment rates, more social services, but it's quite far from the rest of the west. Expensive, epic long flights to the US or Canada, especially those with family on the east coast. Think their cities are more American-like in that they're harder to live in without owning a car, similar suburban style architecture and neighborhoods.
Other surveys have more variety. I would not consider any list to be the absolute truth. What life will be like for each of us in these cities depends on our wealth, age, skills, language ability, connections, weather preferences, transportation preferences, whether we prefer more things socialized or privatized, etc.
Yeah, affordability doesn't seem to be a factor in these surveys, does it? And like you said, that is part of "liveability" for many of us. Maybe the people who do these surveys are independently wealthy, or have jobs flitting about the globe on somebody else's tab doing surveys
The top ten are:
Vancouver, Canada
Melbourne, Australia
Vienna, Austria
Geneva, Switzerland
Perth, Australia
Adelaide, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Zurich, Switzerland
Toronto, Canada
Calgary, Canada
All places with housing costs that are pretty high or even severely unaffordable. Perhaps they don't look at housing though.
But then, you don't really know a place til you actually live there for a few years, working at an average job, living in an average area.
All the cities on the list are from Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Austria! Are you kidding me?
Sounds like a heavily biased list! The world is an enormous place! To give all the main cities in just 4 countries reeks of serious bias.
All the cities on the list are from Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Austria! Are you kidding me?
Sounds like a heavily biased list! The world is an enormous place! To give all the main cities in just 4 countries reeks of serious bias.
Agree with you there. From the link that poxonyou posted, I see that this survey is based on the Mercer one. So that explains it. It's not a survey of ordinary residents but of executives being seconded to various cities around the world and how much "hardship" money their companies have to pay them to maintain their lifestyle - most of us don't live that way.
I know someone who's been surveyed by Mercer and he and his family don't live an ordinary life with the average joe's issues. Company-subsidized rents allow them to live in really nice areas. Company car, cost of living allowances and other goodies also soften the blow of high cost-of-living cities.
So we need to take these results with a pinch of salt. There's some merit to them but they're not the gospel of where to live. Frankly, I look at that list - I've lived in one of them (Vancouver) and now live in another of them (Perth), and don't want to live in either, or any of the other eight.
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