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The most livable cities

economist.com

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Re: The most livable cities

#101

Post by sascha_sl »

bergenty wrote: post #46
isubasinghe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with public transport? I understand in America it's not great, but having frequent, reliable, fast, clean & safe public transport is amazing. Public Transport in a lot of Western European countries are like that with the exception of the DeutscheBahn (DB is hell).

I just find waiting in a station, having to account for schedules, the annoyance of having to deal with bags and luggage and sitting close to people in that setting not all that enjoyable.

Needing to account for schedules is a symptom of a bad public transit system. Good systems have buses/trains show up frequently enough that you can just go without waiting more than 10 minutes, until the point you're taking regional trips, and even then about ~30 minutes of maximum wait is normal in Germany.

Also, it sounds like you're talking about long-distance services here. But this thread is about local to regional services where people don't generally carry around baggage.

Re: The most livable cities

#102

Post by sascha_sl »

bergenty wrote: post #39
LeonidasXIV wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars make cities worse for everyone, whereas public transport makes cities better for everyone, even people using cars because there is less traffic. I enjoy biking, public transport and the density to support a nice shopping/bar/party street within walking distance, but what do I know, living in the second most livable city.

I enjoy biking and hiking in the woods (not city streets), driving cars and living 20 minutes away from a major city so I can go to shops/bars/parties when I feel like it. I also like gardening and farming, wood and metal working and generally doing all kinds of projects involving metal casting, glass blowing, pottery making etc. I would never be able to do comfortably living in a city. The only downside to car cultu…

> I enjoy biking and hiking in the woods (not city streets)

That really is a problem with the city streets. In the Netherlands, bikes are considered such an essential mode of transport that they often have priority over cars.

You'd think that'd result in dutch cities being hell for drivers, but they're really not. Because you're not competing for space with all the people that can choose another mode of transport. Unlike most places in the US where everyone is forced to use a car because good alternatives are nonexistent.

You're not going to drive fast in a dutch city, but you'll also not get "stuck in traffic".

Re: The most livable cities

#103

Post by Engineering-MD »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #86
fumblebee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disappearance of the high-street due to Amazon My own anectdata, but I've made the opposite observation. At least in my hometown (~10k population), I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. While several years ago, I would order relentlessl…

> I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. That's awesome. To qualify my comments, I've also seen some of that change. New shops I've noticed filling in are - a bike repair shop - a "slow living" craft shop - a tailors/upholsterer - a fishmo…

I think it’s a it of winner takes all paradigm. The good places are getting better and average places decline as business and wealth moves to the better places, driving up prices.

Re: The most livable cities

#104

Post by goodpoint »

camillomiller wrote: post #13

what is living well? Why are these lists always so skewed toward such a normative view of liveability? Zürich is a beautiful and well-organized city, for example, but every single time I've been there I've found out that its quiet translates into a boringness I've seldom experienced anywhere else. For me, a man in his late thirties who has no plans to have kids and form a normative family, it's a living nightmare.

It's really weird that people publish rankings without any slider to set the viewer's preferences.

Re: The most livable cities

#105

Post by notahacker »

blowski wrote: post #32

With its colourful graphs and precise numbers, this all sounds very scientific. In reality, I'm guessing a group of people listed where they think is lovely to live and that's what we're now discussing.

I think it's more a bunch of fresh graduates who've never been to most of the cities on the list looked at some data points (and then after realising they were mostly the same as last year's data points did a few news searches to find some points of difference)

Re: The most livable cities

#106

Post by sascha_sl »

isubasinghe wrote: post #42
bergenty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love “car-infested”. Taking public transport and living densely is my version of hell.

What is wrong with public transport? I understand in America it's not great, but having frequent, reliable, fast, clean & safe public transport is amazing. Public Transport in a lot of Western European countries are like that with the exception of the DeutscheBahn (DB is hell).

DB is honestly pretty okay. Germans just love to complain.

The biggest problem with DB is that they're privatized (but state-owned). They've been cutting large parts of the rail network off for good and instead invest in large infrastructure projects with dubious benefits (and then DB executives retire as executies in construction companies hired for these projects).

Re: The most livable cities

#107

Post by byyll »

Loic wrote: post #29

As I wrote last year, these liveability index ignores all the best cities in Europe and I suppose in most countries by focusing on the largest cities. I enjoyed living in the US, France, Denmark and Germany, I can't find Boulder, Besançon, Nantes, Helsingor, Münster, etc. These are all smaller cities outside of the big ones and they would all have a score higher than Vienna in this index. I am 100% confident that you…

The whole idea of "liveability index" is strange to me. Different people have different needs to live and different places have different cultures. This is biased towards the European and generally western style of living which although might be preferable to most people does not mean it's preferable to all.

In addition to there being probably hundreds of variables that are subconscious and/or can't be accounted for with studies.

Re: The most livable cities

#108

Post by blfr »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #86
fumblebee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disappearance of the high-street due to Amazon My own anectdata, but I've made the opposite observation. At least in my hometown (~10k population), I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. While several years ago, I would order relentlessl…

> I've been pleasantly surprised at just how resilient the high-street has been. In the past year, we've had a new bakery, a new arts and craft shop, a new cafe, and the farmer's market is going from strength to strength. That's awesome. To qualify my comments, I've also seen some of that change. New shops I've noticed filling in are - a bike repair shop - a "slow living" craft shop - a tailors/upholsterer - a fishmo…

Banks disappearing is awesome though. They're a blight and the small branches offer usurious services almost exclusively.

Large chains being replaced by smaller establishments would be great but I don't have high hopes here.

Re: The most livable cities

#109

Post by inexcf »

Jabbles wrote: post #100
bildung wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using the median surely goes too far the other way though, discounting the fact that the US is far larger than any of those countries except Russia. Of course the US is less likely to have shooting-free years, it's far bigger. The stats are deaths per million people .

That doesn't make the criticism invalid - even if the deaths are weighted by population, choosing the median is far more likely to give a non-zero value for larger countries.

Please explain. I really cant see how that might be the case.

Re: The most livable cities

#110

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Jabbles wrote: post #74
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mass shootings are rare Yeah, but... Typical (Median) Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings (U.S., Canada, and Europe, 2009-2015) United States — 0.058 Albania — 0 Austria — 0 Belgium — 0 Czech Republic — 0 Finland — 0 France — 0 Germany — 0 Italy — 0 Macedonia — 0 Netherlands — 0 Norway — 0 Russia — 0 Serbia — 0 Slovakia — 0 Switzerland — 0 United Kingdom — 0 Using the median analysis, th…

Using the median surely goes too far the other way though, discounting the fact that the US is far larger than any of those countries except Russia. Of course the US is less likely to have shooting-free years, it's far bigger. Other ways to display this data would be: - group Europe into 1 - split the US into states - display error bars - take 95% lower bound assuming a normal distribution https://www.evanmiller.org/…

> it's far bigger

It's also the only country in the West were regularly every year there are a few mass shootings.

That's the real problem, they have normalized it, all other countries have usually zero mass shootings for many consecutive years.

What matters is that USA can't stop them.

> Of course the US is less likely to have shooting-free years

Not bigger than

Albania + Austria + Belgium + Czech Republic + Finland + France + Germany + Italy + Macedonia + Netherlands + Norway + Serbia + Slovakia + Switzerland + United Kingdom = ~363 million people

USA = ~330 million people

---

Typical (Median) Annual Death Rate per Million People:

Team Europe (363 million people) = 0

USA (330 million people) = 0.058

p.s. read the study I linked

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