Conflicting global liveabilty rankings can happily be taken with a grain of salt
They make for compelling reading - city lists that compare and rank liveability and affordability - but do they have credibility.
An organisation called The Institute for Quality of Life, based in London, has just released its global list of world’s happiest cities. I’m so happy for them.
The institute “conducts research on issues related to the quality of life. It monitors, analyses and studies the areas related to decision-making in communities, creation of social policies, implementation of public services and the effectiveness in responding to new challenges and crises that accompany developing communities.”
Their world ranking for 2024 concluded that the world’s happiest cities were Aarhus in Denmark, followed by Zurich, Switzerland. Berlin took third place. The highest-ranking Australian city was Brisbane. It came in 21st.
You won’t read much about this survey in Sydney because it placed a lowly 116th – behind Melbourne (41st), Perth (61st) and Hobart (87th).
Are these lowly ratings a worry? Hardly.
Other than understandably being pounced upon by mayors of any cities that somehow end up in the top echelon, these global city rankings are highly subjective, and seem to be proliferating like rabbits before myxomatosis. And like rabbits, they can be pest.
For example, the credibly sounding Economist Intelligence Unit publishes another global ranking of city liveability. In 2024, it again ranked Vienna the world’s most liveable city, with Melbourne in fourth place and Sydney seventh.
Meanwhile, last month’s Demographia global survey of housing affordability ranked cities in Australia, Canada and New Zealand as the least affordable in the world in 2024.
So when the Economist Intelligence Unit was consistently ranking Melbourne as the world’s most liveable city (for seven years in a row from 2011 to 2017), the Demographia global affordability survey was at the same time ranking Melbourne as one of the world’s least affordable cities.
It’s counter intuitive to believe one group can rate a city as among the world’s most liveable, while another points out that city is hopelessly unaffordable.
People are living in tents in our capitals right now. Maybe they are very liveable tents, and perhaps they are very happy, but I seriously doubt either is true.
The heights of survey stupidity were reached several years ago when Sydney’s major daily newspaper declared it had identified “Sydney’s ten most liveable suburbs.” Below is their list:
Yes, it’s a list of some of Sydney’s most expensive suburbs - all of them inner city.
The research criteria at the time reads like a wish list of location attributes sought after by the wealthiest amongst the community.
It included things like: access to employment (the nearby CBD employs a lot of very highly paid people); being close to light rail and trains (most concentrated in the inner city); bus stops (fair enough); ferry access (limited to being close to water, which is also where the high priced real estate is); culture (being close to theatres, museums and art galleries – most of which are centralised in downtowns, meaning inner city locations are bound to win); main road congestion (the further from slow moving traffic the better, but inner city residents working in the CBD have less of this problem); education (agreed - the more primary and high schools the better, and the closer the better); shopping (fair enough to a point); open space (agreed); tree cover (nothing quite like those leafy inner city suburbs with the spreading old deciduous trees; topographic variation (hills are great for expansive views and also high priced real estate); cafes and restaurants (I kid you not, this is word for word: “Access to a decent short black and a sushi train should be a no-brainer.” Yep, they’ve nailed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with that one); crime (obviously best avoided); telecommunications; views (“The more water views – whether it’s of the harbour, a bay or the ocean – the better”); beach access (well of course, life’s a beach in a multi-million dollar home with harbour views and beach access).
Remarkable isn’t it? They have equated liveability with wealth and privilege. And now the aforementioned Institute for Quality of Life seems to doubling down on this by weaving “happiness” into some half baked formula that pretends to be able equate life in Zurich with life in Melbourne.
In short, if you are seriously wealthy and can afford to live in some of the best locations in the most expensive cities in the world, you are probably a lot happier with your liveability equation than people living in Damascus, Syria (which the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the world’s least liveable). It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to work that out.
By all means enjoy reading the various global happiness and liveability surveys and tell all your friends about it should your city pop up as a world leader from time to time.
But much like your horoscope predictions, treat them as a bit of harmless fun. Maybe some light reading with your short black, a sushi train and a grain of salt.
Just don’t treat them seriously, it only encourages them.
