patrick.net

doesn't look good for Melbourne. There are articles coming out of a giant housing bubble in Australia that locals can't afford to live there, even when it's a huge empty continent.

According to this link:

http://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/Melbourne-named-world-most-abc-2463348077.html?x=0#mwpphu-container

Cities are with rated on political & social stability, crime rates, education, access to quality health care, cultural events, the environment, as well as the standard of infrastructure.

The weight of each:
A. Stability (25% of total)
B. Healthcare (20% of total)
C. Culture and Environment (25% of total)
D. Education (10% of total)
E. Infrastructure (20% of total)

I would like to see another article with the complete list of cities.

How in the hell do you quantify Livable?

Sound like some pompous ass talking about the places he had been . "Oooh and I couldn't get a cafe Late in Mozambique to save my life... And the help in Guatemala could have used some refining. Rome had every thing We had no problem finding a Whopper. "

No, it's a very detailed survey by the Economist (in the U.K.). I noticed they didn't rank British cities all that high.

Interesting that livable doesn't include the cost of living.

Yeah, a lot of these cities are among the most expensive to live. But hey, these are Economist readers :)

Toronto ain't that cheap for sure. A couple of years back I was there and everything from taxis to coffee was very expensive.

Speaking of methodology, I remember I think US News & World Report ranks cities for retirement purposes. They used to make days of sunshine a very heavily weighted aspect, which put a lot of Arizona and Florida cities at or near the top. When they discounted the weighting of days of sunshine based on criticism, a lot of the formerly high ranking places dropped way down the list. These weren't surprises as a lot of these AZ/FL cities had higher than average crime, little cultural/sport/ed opportunities for their size, etc.

Overweighing Weather doesn't seem to be the problem in this case, though, given how many Canadian cities are on the list, not to mention Vienna and Helsinki.

I would weigh in a bit for the weather.

What kind of culture is there in Calgary? At least Toronto and Vancouver are believable in that regard.

Honolulu's culture is good? It's a military town, no offense, but that usually doesn't produce good culture (think San Diego). Maybe because of its diverse population?

At least San Diego has Old Town, the Gaslamp District and Balboa Park (the largest culture park in the US).

corntrollio says

What kind of culture is there in Calgary? At least Toronto and Vancouver are believable in that regard.

Apparently not much.
http://www.livingin-canada.com/living-in-calgary-alberta.html

Calgary's Negatives
* * * * *
- A lack of history, historical buildings, and culture.

They seemed to lump culture and environment together though so it probably got a lot "environment" points in the study.

Calgary has a very clean environment. It was rated as the world's cleanest city by Forbes Magazine in 2007 (this is the most recent survey published)...

I'm sorry, but if the top US city is Honolulu at # 26, then this is skewed away from U.S.

I lived in Melbourne for 7 years . It has a great road network in fantastic condition with a good rail and tram network . It has 3 world class stadiums about a 10 minute walk from the city centre . The Australian tennis open is also held in the city centre .

One of the weirdest thing to get used to was the very low crime rate . I knew people there who went to bed and night and left their doors unlocked . After a couple of years there I was leaving windows open when I went to work without even a second thought and used to just leave the car unlocked outside of the house and even in carparks .

Property and food is very expensive though .

Weather isn't weighed heavily enough I think...