The most livable cities in the world according to the Global Liveability Ranking in 2023, 2022, and 2021 respectively
As you can see, Amsterdam only made it on the list once and Melbourne and Zürich made it all 3 times so if that means something, it's probably good
Also how the fuck did Calgary make this list twice
Finally, what the fuck was happening in Australia in 2021, like that is a shit ton of Aussie cities
Ok I was very curious, so I looked into what aspects of a city are considered for this list.
The five categories considered are stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.
Some additional things I discovered:
- Australian cities are ranking high because of their “return to order” after covid
- Western european cities are falling because of worker’s strikes and “civil unrest”
- The EIU (the organization that releases this index) has been criticized for associated English-speaking cities with liveability, which also might explain why australian and canadian cities are so high
- Affordability is not considered. Which would explain how Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary are appearing on these lists as the most expensive cities in Canada
- I was briefly confused as to why they kept saying Asian countries were doing so well in the summaries until I realized they were referring to Asian and Pacific countries, thereby including Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand
- The war in Ukraine is impacting the liveability score of many European cities, they do not say how it’s impacting them (aside from Ukrainian cities, which is obvious). I’m assuming they’re considering political ramifications, and maybe energy access considering sanctions on Russian oil?
- It doesn’t appear to include any kind of indicator for walkability and it seems their standards for public transit are weak. I can’t specifically speak to this as Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary have relatively good public transit and walkability/bikeability compared to other Canadian cities. (Please note: compared to European cities and many Asian cities, this transit is still awful) I’m not sure what mobility is like in the other cities on the list
- There appears to be nothing about the literal ecological environment of the cities, besides temperature and humidity apparently. This, again, explains Calgary and Toronto (known to have terrible sprawl) getting onto the list
So take this how you will.
Yeah, that is concerning, I hadn’t really looked that deep into the criteria, but the criteria now do seem quite odd
