Friday, May 08, 2009

Best cities to live in

A new list of "The world's top cities offering the best quality of life."
The cities were ranked on a variety of factors, including health, education, safety, etc. Not surprisingly, the US didn't do so well. This seems to be focusing on larger cities, so I'm not sure if Salt Lake or other smaller cities were considered.
I've lived within an hour of Zurich (#2), Frankfurt (#8), and San Francisco (#30). I've visited maybe 20 of these cities, and I'm pretty much in agreement with the rankings.
Vienna tops the list at #1 (an under-rated tourist destination too, by the way), and Honolulu is the top US city, at #29 (right next to San Francisco).
Take a look and tell me what you think.
Now if only I can convince April into moving to some of the cities near the top of the list...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

My wife has traveled a lot of places, but she says there aren't many places outside the U.S. that she would want to raise a family and really settle down. She spent a summer or two in Australia, though, and says she'd love to live there (if it were right for our family, of course).

Tim said...

Obviously, living in the middle of a city (where most tourist destinations are) is very different than living 45 minutes from a city. Living in San Francisco? Not a chance. It's a great city, but you don't raise a family inside it. You raise a family 30 minutes from it, in Sunnyvale.
Half-an-hour from Frankfurt, there's a small village with three or four LDS families (and their numerous children). I spent two years of my childhood in a wonderful village 30 minutes from Zurich. A small village, but there were plenty of children my age. Yes, the culture is different, but I think it can still be a great place to raise a family.
Australia and New Zealand do significantly better than the US does on that list, by the way.