Vienna, Best Cities 2014

Vienna rank 2nd place in best-country-to-live-in-2. A friend from Toronto asked me what I think, as a person who had been living in Vienna for almost 10 years. Maybe he was annoyed that all 3 cities from Canada ranked from 3rd to 5th place but all behind Vienna.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/08/daily-chart-13

The ranking was made by the best analytical minds, exclusively using raw data but no human survey involved. Which is good from some perspective, for example, as a reference on global trend of comfortability, business could explore their market appropriately. e.g. selling foreign real estate to those with relatively lower rank, cheating those people with the possibility to immigrate; selling ANYTHING to those with higher rank since comfortable life makes people stupid. No offence to Toronto, but just a bad interpretation on “stay hungry, stay foolish".

It is easy to put a number on education, health care, infrastructure, e.g. number of universities, percentage of higher education graduates, health funding per head count. The “best cities" ranking, based only on liveability index, like political stability, food supply, hospitals with doctors surrounding me when I am sick… those are the basics. It’s like being held hostage, with sufficient bread, bed and panadol. That’s already liveable. Some other factors like number of museums, civilized people, environment, those are quality of life. Which are like bonus after you survived.

I suppose the ranking aimed for business and politic reference only. Since my Toronto friend made it personal, it inspired me of thinking, how to make a rank of “best inhabit cities for any individual on earth". Why “any individual", if only the locals found it comfortable, it means nothing. “Best inhabit cities for the local" is like “my kid is the best kid in the whole universe". The forest bust be the best place to live if you are an africans forest savages, which at the same time, you might find it impossible to live in any big-city.

So how about “Best inhabit cities for big-city people". This research became racist to those from smaller city, and some NYC look down to any human on earth. Imagine a guy from Aspen read the rank and immigrate to NYC.

Great! Now narrow it down, “Generally Best inhabit cities for those who do NOT want to spend the rest of their life in a small town". If I do not put the word “generally", the name of this rank will be longer than the “Harry Porters".

However, it is almost impossible to put a number for the level of ‘racist’, or the level of residence’s ‘foreign acceptance’. If the rank is for people searching for a better place to immigrate, the internationality level of the place should also be taken in consideration.

Now let’s get back to the topic. For me, the most comfortable city is not only about peace, food and health. If the city you are living lack some of the above mentioned factors, you better leave asap. After ones satisifed with those basics, then we talk about environment, culture, political satisfaction and civilization level of citizens. If you’re satisfied with all the above and you have a stable income, congratulations! Stay there for the rest of your life if you feel happy.

Feeling comfortable is easy, midnight at the back of a garage, lying on a picnic table cloth on the floor, sounds uncomfortable to me, but definitely supreme comfortable for the couple who were having sex on it for their first time in life. So, comfortable or not, is about happiness. In Vienna, the suicide rate is high, lots of citizens suffered from alcohol problems, and the old ladies hate foreigners, not only Asians.

There is another list of “Top 10 World’s Best Countries to live in 2014″ based on “world happiness report" released by United Nations General Assembly. Vienna, Austria rank No.8, Canada rank No.6. http://lifestyle9.com/worlds-best-country-to-live-in-2013