The best country to work, live and study in?

[HorseedS]

They flee from low quality of life and low incomes and crumbling infrastructure and are tired of living in cramped conditions sleeping next to their stoves

[Machiavelli2]

Abdi

The world's most liveable city is farcical published by the Economist Magazine. Those surveyed are Western expats who are at the higher end of employment and they were solely intended for this survey to consider their expatriate relocation options and none of the local (downtown) residents regardless of their income were asked to participate the Economist's Intelligence Unit's so called 'most liveable city'. For example, I had a chat with an Australian from Melbourne. He told me the basic fundamental services such as gas, electricity and water have increased by up to 90% for the last few years and most households are forced to slice elsewhere from their budgets. House prices have doubled in the past decade and renting a property in the inner city have doubled too, which forced most of the low income wage earners and the unemployed into the outer suburbs. Transportation in the inner city suburbs is ok, but their train services and stations is akin to the dinosaur era if you ask a person from Hong Kong, Singapore or even from Barcelona visiting Melbourne. If you speak to an Australian who is a well traveller and tell him that Melbourne is the most liveable city, they will just laugh at you. The most liveable city compilation is intended only to those well paid expats who want to live, work, play and enjoy a city for a short period of time. Sadly, none of them are members in Somalinet.

This is what a Melbourne Newspaper has to say about Melbourne being voted as the Best Liveable City by the Economist Magazine. Delusion.


Welcome to the world's most liveable delusion.

....Unfortunately, all metrics are only as good as the things they count; and the Economist Intelligence Unit Liveability Ranking, which is now interpreted as the league table among competing cities, is far from a scientific guide to anyone's experience in Melbourne or anywhere else.
The rankings were originally conceived as a scale for determining benefits to executives or knowledge workers sent overseas. If employees go to a dangerous place with oppressive weather and no private education or healthcare, they need compensation. The rankings reflect an upper-middle-class view of the world that greatly values comforts and security but has no dimension of social responsibility, diversity, equity or sustainability.


It's of no interest to the Economist Intelligence Unit, for instance, that Melbourne is almost totally dependent on petrol, and that for anyone without a car it's impossible to get from Doncaster to Knox or Vermont to Oakleigh or Mulgrave to Bulleen or Keilor to Thomastown or Kew to Dingley.

According to the unit, Melbourne scrubs up pretty well because it's peaceful, has excellent weather, has a good hospital system and is reliable and prosperous. The positive statistics derive from its climate, excellent police force, its remoteness from conflict and the availability and quality of private and public healthcare and education.

Noting that the top 63 cities in the world have few degrees of difference, the Economist Intelligence Unit authors nevertheless attempt an explanation for what puts certain top cities in the lead. The authors relate the highest performance to medium-sized cities in wealthier countries of lower density.

This correlation of high marks and low density has been widely publicised as the cause of our glory. This despite the fact that the unit itself concedes that there's little statistical difference at the top end of the tables, where a superior position arises from infinitesimal degrees of separation. A single road closure can demote a city by two steps.

From a planning point of view, the Economist Intelligence Unit analysis is a catastrophe, because it confirms our resistance to urban density. It now seems provident that we have so many obstinate building restrictions and setbacks to maintain our low density. Alas, the Australian fear of living close to other Australians has had the unfortunate consequence of creating a vast sprawl which is unliveable without millions of cars.

How the unit came to its conclusion defies its own metrics. Density features in none of the rubrics. The qualities measured don't relate in any way to density; and very few can even be described as aesthetic. There's a vague possibility that we could attribute a lower crime rate to lower density, on the basis that maybe people with criminal tendencies are happier among gardens and are somehow lulled by leaf and persuaded that a hammock is better than a hammer.

If I had to explain why Melbourne has a relatively low crime rate, I'd rather ascribe the cause to the thousands of dedicated school teachers in the state and Catholic systems who have an unpaid second occupation as social workers and counsellors. Their kindness and care for young people of all classes are much more likely to make for crime prevention than the hectares of empty gardens that require cars and are alienating for youth.

We know that low density has nothing to do with liveability by the very study that suggests it. The intelligence unit itself consistently rates Vienna close to the top. This year, the elegant city on the Danube is number two, just below Melbourne. Vienna is a city where most people live in apartments of five-or-so storeys, built hard upon the street, without setbacks or suburban gardens. Vienna's 1.7 million inhabitants occupy relatively little land; and yet the city is secure, reliable, has beautiful water and is an international cultural destination with all the other amenities that a foreign executive could desire, if not our lovely weather all year round.

Of course, there are aspects of Melbourne, as in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide, that earn the marks. You risk life and limb if you want to get around on a bike but at least your fingers don't freeze on the handlebars. You can always get milk, and divergent opinions are seldom censored and never punished.

Nevertheless, the idea that we Down Under have the urban formula for liveability - which is based on spreading out over unsustainable hectares of automotive space - is an irresponsible delusion that sets us up for disaster when the petrol runs out, and a filthy planet while it lasts.


http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/welcome ... 1jqbd.html

Another Melbourne voice.

Does being the most liveable city in the world mean anything?

But of course league tables like The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) annual Liveability Survey are all bunkum and sensible people shouldn’t be sucked in. The EIU’s Survey purportedly provides an objective ranking of world cities based on 58 variables measuring dimensions like political stability, health care, environment, culture, education and infrastructure. However, as I’ve explained before (here, here and here), there are a number of reasons why liveability league tables are best left to the marketeers.

The EIU’s Survey is designed primarily to assist companies with formulating appropriate living allowances for staff posted to overseas cities. These people are transitory and well-heeled – they don’t experience the city like the average permanent resident. They usually rent somewhere convenient and salubrious, so they won’t care too much about high housing prices and inadequacies in outer suburban public transport.


I would be more inclined to focus on the attractiveness of a city and measure how sought after it is (perhaps by looking at the difference between wages and housing costs). It’s instructive, I think, that few of the cities in the EIU’s top ten are the sorts of places young people around the world seem to aspire to live in. Let’s be realistic, Australian cities don’t have quite the drawing power of places like London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Paris.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/ ... -anything/

A Critique of The Economist’s ‘Most Liveable Cities’ Report.

http://thisbigcity.net/a-critique-of-th ... es-report/

[MujahidAishah]

Who wouldn't want to look live in Oz the qaxooti that went there were ilbax caydh and hot weather happy days

[AbdiJohnson]

These rankings are not a guessing game or only include polling. A wide range of indicators are measured and the Economist is not the only one that does these rankings and they at not the only ones who ended up having similar looking lists. These rankings don't say these cities are perfect and of course there are cities not in that list that have done a better job at certain things then these top cities have done. Measurement and evaluation is a professional field. These lists are not created by journalists but by experts in this field. It takes months of work and research and analysis to create these livable cities list. Just like they take months and years to measure how certain government program performed for example. These lists are not ridiculous. It shows the overall general picture.

I am,

Abdi Johnson

[Rambie]

I want:

Cold weather

Open space

Good infrastructure

Stable carrer


Got to go to Canada

Either Calgary or Toronto

[Machiavelli2]

Abdi

Ina Adeer aad ayaa u madax adagtahay. With a clear head and without pre-conceived idea of sidaa adiga u maleeysay ka baxo and look at the facts.

1) this 'most liveable city' compilation is done by the Economist magazine.

2) The intended target are for high wage earners expatriates to attract them to specific cities and not your typical mum and dads or some person who earns the average wage and wants to migrate.

3) All the participants in the the survey are expat executives and not the locals.

Therefore, whose benefit are they publishing these rankings? Read again the two Australian Melbourne links and see if they agree with you that Melbourne is the 'Most Liveable City'. Are you more knowledgeable about their City?

Believe whatever you want but all the indicators used by the magazine was intended for the emjoyment of your short time highly paid expat executives willing to work in those cities, not for you and me and Geedi Shambow from Somalinet.

[LobsterUnit]

Dp

[LobsterUnit]

As my ayeeyo always said, this shit (she never swore) aint yours, wax barta, wax dhista and help your fellow kneegrows (she use to call all black people zwahili for some reason)., ney york, london, washington were built on the labour of black slaves and developed by whites whilst your people were looting camels.war dadkani "all those cities are the same to me" waa imtixaan.

[malibantu]

Victoria island and Vancouver my number 1.
p.s Ya'all ever been to Melbourne Australia? My worst ever vacation destination, its pretty much a shanty town, small roads Rusty 1950's traffic lights. but I enjoyed my few days in Sydney that city is alive just like NY.

[MoAwr]

According to a recent survey conducted by Awr inc. ;
The best place to work is London
The best place to live is burco
The best place to study is Singapore

[LiquidHYDROGEN]

As my ayeeyo always said, this shit (she never swore) aint yours, wax barta, wax dhista and help your fellow kneegrows (she use to call all black people zwahili for some reason)., ney york, london, washington were built on the labour of black slaves and developed by whites whilst your people were looting camels.war dadkani "all those cities are the same to me" waa imtixaan.

Your ayeeyo was a smart woman. Somalis always claiming magaalooyin aaney shaqo ku lahayn.

[anzeloti]

That's livability, education ....is..

Asia Dominating the top 4



Africa

[anzeloti]

According to a recent survey conducted by Awr inc. ;

The best place to live is burco

Burco Boulevard

[gedo_gurl]

Burco will go places, watch that space.

I can't say that London is that great. A million places to eat and dance but not much else. No-one has the money to do fun things regularly (hence the binge drinking), there is no 'community' outside of workplace and school. We spend our days working to pay off high rents and food bills - 6 tomatoes cost 2.5 US dollars, not organic ones either and 6 eggs are two dollars....a regular loaf of bread is a dollar fifty. A weekly travel card costs 55 USD, which is 3/4 of a days wage for some low income workers. Add this to the cost of heating, electricity, mandatory TV license, council tax, biil to relatives and your little savings and you've got maybe £30 a week to spend if you're lucky. When I started working I was earning £350 a week full time and people thought I had a good job. So many people here live on frozen food (which is also getting expensive because the middle range restaurants also buy frozen fish etc) and we even have food banks (donated food) for the urban poor - very British gesture, shows how great this country is...lower middle classes are the backbone of this country.
The tourists and super rich are the ones who get to enjoy London. The rest of us dream of somewhere less polluted, sunny, quiet with the same dependable infrastructure. Thats why all the British lottery winners (jk) and retirees have 'colonised' parts of Spain lol. I'm saving to move to Gambia...pesticides are illegal there, cost of living is cheap, beautiful resorts, and I can hear the adaan in the morning. It'll take me 10 years insha Allah but goodbye noise pollution and sad looking Somali children.

[Adali]

London is hands down one of the best places to live, a place I enjoy staying, because it is such a big city there is something for everyone. One thing I dislike about london is the traffic and high rent isn't that attractive either to be honest.