Ista

Australia has done really well in Mercer's new Quality of Living rankings with six cities in the top 50.

Sydney is 10th, Melbourne 18th; Perth 21st; Canberra 26th; Adelaide 32nd; and Brisbane 36th. The UK hasn't done so well with only one city coming in the top 50, which is London at 39. The top 10 is dominated by (continental) European cities.



Living conditions in each city are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:

Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement, etc)

Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services, etc)

Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom, etc)

Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc)

Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools, etc)

Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion, etc)

Recreation (restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports and leisure, etc)

Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc)

Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services, etc)

Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)


I thought I'd put this up as there's quite a lot of anecdotal discussions on here about comparisons between different cities - this is quite a thorough analysis of many of the services these cities offer so worth a look!

canadaeh

So this survey just proves that Europe is better than Australia.

I knew that already

DownUnderPaddy

...and that the UK is worse, but we knew that too

Ista

Well, actually it's mainly just Switzerland and Germany that did 'better'.

canadaeh

Which are in Europe

stuartsummers1980

Auckland was also rather high up. Have to confess I never lived there but when on my travels I always felt like it was a bit of a poor mans Sydney.

RedT

Surprised at San Francisco coming quite far down the list, we wanted to move there before we decided on Sydney instead.

Not surprised that London fared badly though, this place is a dump...



Tx

ABCDiamond

Don't forget Austria, Canada and New Zealand...

The top 20 countries

Ista

So say Germany and Switzerland. Europe's a big place.

Vancouver, Auckland and Sydney were all in the top 10. I'm actually quite surprised London did SO badly (I thought it would maybe be in the top 30), I wonder what they scored in each part.

Ista

Yes, sorry - I was referring to the comment that 'Europe' did better when actually it wasn't Europe as a whole but just two countries in Europe (as well as Vienna, which was number one!).

canadaeh

The survey was on cities, was it not?

And in the top 50, 26 of them are European cities, while only 6 are Australian cities, if you want to include New Zealand (as it’s in the region) then it makes a total of 7.

Out of the top 10 on the survey, 7 are European cities and 1 is Australia.

So yes, I’d say that makes Europe “Better”.

Ista

Uh, there's a lot more cities in Europe than in Australia.

coolshadows

excuses, excuses...

ABCDiamond

Very little in it really...

2 out of 6 Cities in Oceania, or 33%, were in the top 10
7 out of 26 Cities in Europe, or 27%, were in the top 10
and then
1 out of 12 Cities in North America, or 8% were in the top 10


The actual points awarded were interesting, comparing 2009 to 2010

canadaeh

There are indeed, and yet still with all those cities to look after, they still come out on top. Australian can’t even manage the few it has.