Talk:City quality of life indices

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

On 2 January 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Most livable cities to City quality of life indices. The result of the discussion was moved.

More than one survey

According to the Melbourne article:

Melbourne has twice ranked first in a survey by The Economist of The World's Most Livable Cities on the basis of its cultural attributes, climate, cost of living, and social conditions such as crime rates and health care, once in 2002 [1], and again in 2004 – a year in which the Economist truly took a shine to Australian cities, with the five largest cities in Australia given rankings of 6 or better. In 2005, however, it was ranked 2nd, behind Vancouver, Canada.

Thus it appears that there is more than one reputable survey entitled to be called the World's Most Livable Cities. I suggest that verifiable sources be provided for both, with specific references. The article then needs to be expanded to accomodate both surveys (if not more).--Couttsie 16:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pilatus, before my edits there were no verifiable references whatsoever for this article. In addition, it was seriously incomplete and biased, favouring a relatively obscure Mercer Human Resource Management survey over a world renowned survey by the EIU team from The Economist.

I suggest that you read the newspaper references that I have now provided, remove the copyright voliation tag. Also, note my earlier post to this discussion page. Wikipedia already references the EIU information on the Melbourne article (and no doubt elsewhere). --Couttsie 17:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed the issue on your talk page. Pilatus 18:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contentious?

Saying this about Melbourne: "strengthening the idea that Australia is a desirable destination", sounds fine and objective, but then: "which further proves Canada is one of the greatest and most desirable places to live in or visit"... Seriously, proves and then 2 superlatives? I changing it. Electriceel 04:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why does the link to the definition of "living conditions" go to a Buffy reference?203.110.137.114 07:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have something to say... they say that Vancouver is one of the best place to live, cuz of low crime....what about the drug use? Vancouver has the highest drug rate in Canada....some places are known to have tons of stonned people taking drugs on the side walk. i thing that should be considered...ChrisDVD

Hi,

I removed a sentence at the end of one of the paragraphs that basically said, Scotland had a surprise with Glasgow... words to that effect. I just took it away because it was so poorly worded, not in a reference text style, and was pretty demeaning to say that Scotland and Glasgow were surprising places to be in the top 10. Marc 81.99.10.116 (talk) 23:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@ChrisDVD Dude i live in vancouver there are two parts downtown all the drugs and the rest literally no noise durng nighttime and most of the day 22:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.183.44.117 (talk)

A point of code/grammar (or something related)

I have a question for the Wiki gurus... why is there a link "Mercer Quality of Living Survey" that leads from this page to this page? Seems like a circular waste of time and needlessly obfuscatory. Angelsy1 03:39, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Angelsy1[reply]

You're right, it shouldn't be like that, so I've just fixed it. Don't forget though, it's generally ok to fix things like this yourself or make changes as you see fit without asking permission first... one of Wikipedia's mottos is "Be bold" :-) Easel3 13:24, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are 13 Cities said to be in the top 10.

Discuss.

It actually says 11, but it's still a problem... In fact, looking at it, this whole article needs an overhaul. It's out of date (only showing the 2005 results) and pretty poorly set out. Anybody should add good links and things if they find them. Electriceel [ə.lɛk.tʃɹɪk il] 02:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

.........++ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.83.97.81 (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Mercer Quality of Living 2009 table is incorrect or has been vandalised. Glasgow is not in the top 10. Sydney was rated 10th on the list. Table corrected.--Simonmetcalf (talk) 23:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The top ten table is incorrect or has been vandalized - Sydney, Australia was not first, it was Vienna, Austria. The score is correct. Table corrected.

Urrrgh

In my "Modern" skin this page is a horrible mess, with the black lines separating the sections cutting across the table. LukeSurl^{t c} 19:55, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Places Rated Almanac

Is this article titled Most liveable cities in the US? NO

So why, why, why is this in here?? I delete this section but some one puts it back. WHY are you doing this? Do you have a commprehension problem with the title of the article? If you want this on Wikipedia so badly, please put it on an appropriate page!

Liveability rankings

The Monocle's 2009 liveability rankings
	City	Country
1	Zürich	Switzerland
2	Copenhagen	Denmark
3	Tokyo	Japan
4	Munich	Germany
5	Helsinki	Finland
6	Stockholm	Sweden
7	Vienna	Austria
8	Paris	France
9	Melbourne	Australia
10	Berlin	Germany
11	Honolulu	United States
12	Madrid	Spain
13	Sydney	Australia
14	Vancouver	Canada
15	Barcelona	Spain
16	Fukuoka	Japan
17	Oslo	Norway
18	Singapore	Singapore
19	Montreal	Canada
20	Auckland	New Zealand
21	Amsterdam	Netherlands
22	Kyoto	Japan
23	Hamburg	Germany
24	Geneva	Switzerland
25	Lisbon	Portugal

Spelling

The list itself spells it liveability:

http://www.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=The_Global_Liveability_Report&page=noads

why is this wiki page different leaving out the "e"? SeanMack (talk) 12:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Update?

Information should be updated to reflect changes in the list brought by Mercer's 2009 report (http://www.mercer.com/qualityofliving). 64.254.251.144 (talk) 15:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Los Angeles in Austria?

Fail —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.217.93.220 (talk) 16:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was vandalism. Everyone knows LA is a hellhole. 219.73.28.229 (talk) 08:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's obvious you've never been to LA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.52.65 (talk) 16:11, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

India not in top 10 for Mercer. Why is Ahmedabad listed as no. 1?

The page seems to have been vandalised. Ahmedabad in India is listed as the world;s most liveable city in the Mercer list. This is incorrect. I think it score less than 100 due to environment alone. Can somebody please update this to Vienna. Regards Ben —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.92.177 (talk) 02:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Try refreshing. I already reverted and blocked the vandal from editing the page. Elockid ^(Talk) 03:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Possible to provide the full Economist list?

I suspect the Economist Intelligence Unit is reluctant to share its entire list of 140 cities, but it would be interesting to see. Also, what are the criteria to be included in the rankings at all? (e.g. minimum population.) Are the rankings done purely on the basis of statistical data? I find it amusing that Detroit and Boston are ranked almost the same. Anyone who has actually visited those two cities would reach a very different conclusion.Tetsuo (talk) 17:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Better title

Hi. At the moment, this article's title is World's most livable cities. Some editors have commented adversely in the past on this title, and I would on the whole agree with their thinking. I would therefore like to start a poll of editors' views on a possible better title.

My grouses are:

Livable (or liveable) cities to me means you can live cities. You can't, though. You can live in cities, however, so they could be liveable-in cities. Yes, I know you see liv(e)able in many places, but it still jars, to my eyes/ears.
However, English (I've over a half-century of native English usage) has a seemingly ready-made alternative: habitable. Perfectly respectable, more used, and free of transitive/intransitive concerns. (Yes, I'm something of a linguist.)
Livable to me should in any case have an e before the~able.

Google hits confirm my thoughts:

[1] finds 26 million hits for habitable
[2] finds 19 million hits for liveable
[3] finds 8 million hits for livable

I therefore would see the following options for proceeding with name change, in my own suggested order of preference:

Option 1 - World's most habitable cities

Option 2 - World's most liveable-in cities

Option 3 - World's most livable-in cities

Option 4 - World's most livable cities

i.e. keep the title as it is now.

Please give your own thoughts below this line - thanks. Trafford09 (talk) 09:59, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Option 5 - World's most liveable cities ? SeanMack (talk) 03:21, 3 September 2011 (UTC) I've no overly strong preference though. I'm basing my weak preference on the title - "Global liveability report" by the Economist.[reply]

Option 5 - World's most liveable cities indices. The article isn't about the world's most liveable cities (an entirely subjective judgement), it's about lists of the world's most liveable cities. "Liveable" is the word and spelling used by The Economist (and allegedly by Monocle, though I don't see a citation for any of that content), so that's what should be used here. What matters to an encyclopaedia is what it's called, not whether what it's called makes sense. GideonF (talk) 12:34, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Validity of such rankings

Mercer lists three German citis: Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, and Munich. But how can Düsseldorf seriously be more livable than Berlin or Hamburg? From a numeric point of view, which sums up some economic criteria, those criteria selected by Mercer might sum up to a highscore for Düsseldorf. But from a cultural view and from a sense of well-being view, Berlin should clearly be number one. (Similarly, is Sydney really more livable than Melbourne? I have my doubts.) In the words of Berlin's current mayor: "Berlin is poor, but sexy". 20 millions of tourist don't come to Berlin, because of its banking sector (Frankfurt am Main) or because of its high wages (Düsseldorf), but because in Berlin there is "something magic in the air". And Vienna (!) tops that list? The most frumpy, intolerant, and unfriendly city I've ever lived in. Okay, Vienna has very clean water from the Alps. But is that really enough to top the list as the most livable cities? Therefore, we should add a section to this article that critically reflects the inability to measure the "sense of well-being", the "friendliness", the "magic" or the "tolerance" of a city. How can attractiveness for young artists, nice bars, nice people, nice parks, nice buildings be measured? Not in euros, not in dollars, not in Fahrenheit. That's why Mercer is totally wrong. Düsseldorf? Certainly not! 78.52.147.236 (talk) 21:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you would like Mercer et. al. to take culture into account. It is an interesting question you pose. New York isn't on any top ten list for "livability" but last time I checked more people wanted to live there than any other city in the U.S. Yet Honolulu, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago all score higher on "livability." Culture, the arts, nightlife all make cities more interesting. Perhaps that that is a factor in livability, but, evidently, neither The Economist nor Mercer agree. The Global city approach purports to take cultural criteria into account, but looking at their rankings suggests they give proportionately much more weight to economics. Few would quibble with New York and London ranking Alpha++ but I wince when I see Berlin, Rome and Montreal ranking below Frankfort, Milan and Toronto, respectively—seems to me the "economic" outweighs the "cultural," just as in this article the "clean" outweighs the "lively." Sunray (talk) 22:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if that was the point, but indeed, Düsseldorf is a bit of a weird pick. Frankfurst too, IMO. Hamburg is pretty, and Berlin simply has lots of folks, which makes a city more interesting (well, provided the city is wealthy; there are large cities that are poor of course). 2A02:8388:1641:4980:0:0:0:7 (talk) 03:33, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism of the list of livable cities (the Economist list)

The cities have been switched around, Melbourne demoted to third, and WILLEMSTED, CURACAO moved to number 1.

MAJOR MISINFORMATION.

I have absolutely no idea how to fix so can someone who knows please revert?

86.25.187.6 (talk) 22:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Prioritise the source of information

Out of those three sources listed in this article, I have prioritised the Monocle's "Most Livable Cities Index" as the most unbiased source over the Economist Intelligence Unit's "Liveability Ranking and Overview", and "Mercer Quality of Living Survey". I reckon the EIU's Livability Ranking and Overview has the suspicion of favouring the Commonwealth of Nations with Australia (4 entries), Canada (3 entries) and New Zealand (1 entry) occupying 8 spots in the Top 10. The same can be said of Mercer Quality of Living Survey, which has the suspicion of favouring the German-speaking countries with Germany (3 entries), Switzerland (3 entries) and Austria (1 entry) occupying 7 spots in their Top 10. On the other hand, the Monocle's Most Livable Cities Index seems to be more balanced with 3 entries each from the Commonwealth of Nations, the German-speaking countries and the Nordic countries as well as the only source to list an Asian city in its Top 10. Energy110 (talk) 05:01, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Barcelona?

Barcelona, noo???

I can't believe you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.96.54.235 (talk) 10:20, 7 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Country Health Level (CHL) Index, an index based on what?

Um, where is this index from? It looks like someone has just pulled a list of cancer rates, and then decided without any sources, that cancer is due to a lack of access to the natural environment. This ignores obvious factors like differences in life expectancy (the longer you live the more likely you are to have cancer), identification of cancers (you are going to pick up more cancers if the country has a mammogram screening program, and widespread availability of colonoscopies etc, so those countries will look like they have higher rates). There are even natural reasons why some countries have higher rates of cancer, like skin cancer and sun exposure.

There are other issues with this section as well. There is only one citation (which is cited inline, and not in the reference section) which only covers the incidence of cancer in various countries. The other big issue with this section is that it is discussing country based statistics in an article called "World's most liveable Cities"

My suggestion is that this section should be completely removed

14.202.109.16 (talk) 08:42, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Country Health Level (CHL) was removed because of lack of somebodies knowledge

The above comments on that fact that tells where the livable cities are, sounds very stupid. Life styles directly say where cancer rate is high. If you do not believe, travel to countries with low cancer, and see how people look like, from inside and from outside. Then compare it with capitalist countries like Ausi and American who are fed by GMO and factory farming. Then you will find the answer !

You say age is higher, so cancer rate is higher. How stupid is your comment? USA has median age of 37.6 years with cancer incidence of 320/100000, and Japan that is older in average age of people (median age of 46.1 years) has cancer incidence of 217 per 100000 people. Do u really think before u comment???

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/world/incidence/ http://world.bymap.org/MedianAge.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Worldhealthlevel (talk • contribs) 21:48, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This section was removed because it was an unsourced personal opinion, and it wasn't relevant to this page. 110.174.220.98 (talk) 11:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism/ Inconsistency Reports

The Mercer index summary box is showing up wrong but I don't know how to fix it. ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allmedia (talk • contribs) 20:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 15 August 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the page to Most livable cities at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 09:58, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Most livable cities in the world → ? – Should the title be Most livable cities in the world or Most liveable cities in the world? Discuss here. 23.25.229.66 (talk) 17:16, 15 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 11:07, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Since "livable" appears to be the American spelling and "liveable" appears to be the British spelling, this would appear to fall under MOS:RETAIN. Possibly this would be better at a "list" or "lists" title, but the way the article's written there isn't really a list at the moment. Dekimasuよ! 18:59, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Dekimasu. Another issue I have is, the lead calls this article "world's most liveable cities" and says that it is an informal name given to any list of cities as they rank on an annual survey of living conditions. If that is actually a title of those lists and not a descriptive title (as currently used), then maybe the title of this article should actually be that. No reason for the lead bold sentence to be that different from the article title (if that isn't the title of those lists, then the lead just needs to be updated to use the same name). --Gonnym (talk) 20:14, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Remove "in the world". Awhile ago there was a general move to get rid of "in the world" titles because of redundancy. This one seems to have been missed. So until the cities of Barsoom and Titan suddenly take on livability status... Randy Kryn (talk) 01:28, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and please log in when placing multiple RMs to major articles. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:51, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support removing "in the world", WP:CONCISE Ribbet32 (talk) 03:51, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Updating Monocle's list to 2021

I have updated Monocle's list to the latest release in 2021 and listed the lists in order of latest release, removing outdated lists. If there are any objections, feel free to state your reason below, otherwise we will assume there is consensus on this matter. Grandbeans (talk) 21:49, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Use of liveability rankings in city articles

Given the inherent subjectivity and typically western bias in the criteria used for liveability rankings, I propose that we remove these from all city articles.

The major liveability indexes typically cited (Monocle, Economist global liveability index and Mercer) are all western and incorporate western values in their indexes. Nevertheless, the terms with which the rankings are presented typically imply global cross cultural consensus on these rankings. Even when the indexes are explicitly named, as done on the Auckland page for instance, they are still likely to mislead many (especially non-western) readers because readers cannot be expected to know how liveability is judged in these rankings. Many readers may falsely assume that their concept of liveability matches that of the indexes.

An example of a measure used for the Economist index is "discomfort of climate for travellers". Obviously to a degree what is comfortable depends on what you are used to. So are these travellers used to monsoons? Probably not, they probably mean American travellers. Another measure showing strong US bias is "availability of private healthcare" and private education. Even if a city has good education, but not good private options, it will have a lower ranking. Another issue with many rankings in general is that these rankings are generally created from the perspective of people with upper socio-economic status. For example, poorer people may not be able to afford cultural attractions in the city and would therefore much rather prefer better healthcare services. Consequently a city that has more cultural options, but performs poorly on basics such as housing and healthcare, may outrank a city that covers the basics well (and is therefore more liveable for poorer people), but has fewer cultural attractions.

If there were to be a wide array of indexes from different cultures and parts of the world and if a city were to rank highly on all of them, then perhaps including statements about high rankings on those cities may be appropriate. As that is not the case, however, it is my opinion that these rankings mislead readers and add additional western bias to many pages. Philipp.governale (talk) 21:55, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2 January 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 00:01, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Most livable cities → City quality of life indices – Issues with current name 1. The article is about indeces. The current name is rather confusing as it suggests that the article is going to take a stance on the subjective measure of what is most livable. 2. It's not only about the top ranked cities. Many rankings rank a wide variety of cities and show both the most livable and least livable cities. What you focus on depends on the use of the index. 3. livability is not the most suitable word. A livable city is defined to be a city fit to be lived in. This suggests that livability is about the most basic needs, however most (if not all) of the rankings have subjective quality of life measures in them that could vary across culture and other factors. I would also argue that quality of life is a more well understood term than livability and better represents the subjective nature of the indices. Use of the term livability and quality of life/living is somewhat split between the different indices so in my opinion neither are more recognisable than the other, however quality of life has the precision advantage I mentioned earlier. Philipp.governale (talk) 21:53, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. These surveys are inherently subjective and we should not be treating them as objective measurements.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 11:59, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The term is better, but one should also note that these subjective quality of life rankings strongly reflect the perspective of the consulting firms issuing them. According to the argumentation in many of these reports, it should honestly be called City quality of life for expats indices. --Rio65trio (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This makes way more sense.`~HelpingWorld~`^(👽🛸) 21:21, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Graphics / Charts

I think this article would benefit from a graphic. Ideally one that plots over the years.

Aside from this we should make sure that the datasets are useful. To me, personally, living in Vienna, while I like that ranking, I think Vienna is way too small compared to the large cities, and large cities simply offer more opportunities overall due to size alone. So to me personally the ranking is a bit weird. At any rate, this was mostly about a graph - I think it is visually better to show that. Tables are great too, but too many tables are not as easy to "digest" looking at as opposed to graphs. 2A02:8388:1641:4980:0:0:0:7 (talk) 03:32, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]