I was lucky enough to take a biz trip to highly ranked Vancouver in 2013 (Photo: Chris McGinnis)
Vienna has the world’s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2015 Quality of Living rankings. Overall, European cities dominate the top of the ranking along with Zurich, Auckland, and Munich in second, third, and fourth places respectively.
How many of the top 10 highest quality cities have you been to or lived in?
(Image: Mercer)
In North America, Canadian cities rank highest, with Vancouver landing in the top 10, followed by Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. San Francisco is the highest ranking US city, coming in at 27th place. Boston (34) and Honolulu (36) were the other US cities that ranked highly. Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington DC all landed in the top 50. Atlanta came in at 66.
Singapore (26) is the highest-ranking Asian city, whereas Dubai (74) ranks first across the Middle East and Africa. Montevideo in Uruguay (78) takes the top spot for South America.
Baghdad comes in at the bottom of the list, along with several cities in Africa. Have you been to any of the lowest ranking cities?
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The view from my room at the Radisson Blu Royal hotel in Copenhagen (Photo: Chris McGinnis)
I’m lucky enough to have traveled to nearly every city in the top 10– with one painful exception: Vienna! It’s at the top of my European bucket list! I lived in Sydney as a management consultant in the 1980s and would move back in a heartbeat if I was not already located in top ranked San Francisco 🙂
Which cities have you traveled to or lived in? And which one would you most like to live and work in? Among the top 10, I’d probably choose Copenhagen, which I recently wrote about for BBC.
Mercer conducts its Quality of Living survey annually to help multinational companies and other employers compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments. What factors contribute to a city’s ranking? Here’s what Mercer says:
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Yeah, it is a banking city. It was trying to be London for the past four decades but settled in on being “just” another very sophisticated German city loaded with all kinds of stuff, about all anyone might need, except the ocean. However, it has been gritty for decades and still is. Maybe Hamburg should replace Frankfurt on the list? Or Berlin? (still a work in progress, but world class to be sure). The comment about FRA (airport) is true. I have been using FRA since it was still a wooden building, back in 1970, and it has been in build-up chaos mode for the ensuing 45 years. FRA is like a gangly growing kid who just might end up over 8 feet tall! Will it ever stop growing and/or changing? Maybe not. It was easier to use 1970 to 1990, then it became permanently labyrinthine. In some ways it seems to be akin to JFK – in some ways.
I think of Frankfurt as more of a banking city than an industrial one. Hmmm. –chris
Interesting how all the top ten cities are in countries in which the majority of the population speaks a Germanic language. (English is considered a Germanic language.) But take Frankfurt off the list… the despicable Frankfurt airport alone is enough to send Frankfurt way down the list.
Vancouver rocks. Great food, art, history, views. Every city has it’s bad side, where I live often we are in the top few US cities for murder and mayhem. I doubt there is any large metropolitan city of any size anywhere that everywhere is great.
I’ve been to most of the listed top cities, and would generally agree… As noted, Frankfurt is an industrial city and it’s a bit hard to grasp why it’s included.
Vancouver is a lovely city, but on my last visit there, my rental car was broken into not once, but twice in the same weekend. Apparently they have a huge problem with drug addicts committing petty thefts. That experience makes me think its ranking is perhaps unearned.
Afford? I live in Arcata, a small California town, and a city department head told me that no city employees live in this town. [He said no one would use public transportation.] I worked briefly near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and people there told me that many workers traveled up to seventy miles to work—twenty years ago. The New York City area is expanding because people can’t live close in; people blame everyone else but that doesn’t change the trend. And I’m still only talking about the cost of housing, not the politics, personal safety, transportation or other criteria mentioned.
Some people don’t want to move because every place has its own characteristics, and we make the best of whatever there is. Why keep wanting to move to the Best City? Where is the criterion of, “Place where people matter to and care for each other” ?
Thanks, O2! Good thoughts on Germany. I bet Frankfurt ranked highly because of its cosmopolitan nature… lots of people from all over the world live there… so might be an easier place for an expat. And it does have a grea airport! –chris
The lists seem reasonable enough, except I’m amazed Frankfurt made the top 10. It’s not pretty, not all that interesting, relatively expensive, and by German standards it’s fairly gritty (don’t be shocked if you run into addicts shooting up right on the street). The best thing I can say about it would be that it’s easy to get out of Frankfurt, with all the flight/rail connections. Even within Germany there are any number of cities with higher quality of life – besides those on the list, Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, and Stuttgart all come to mind.
The problem with cities in Europe is nobody but the rich can live in them. Places like Sydney and Auckland are great because they are geared toward middle class and you can afford to live there. I would move to either of those cities in a heartbeat. Of course the European cities are nice too, but just can’t afford them.