Condé Nast - The Best Cities in the World 2017

[logan5]

The list makes sense for the most part, except how does Vancouver make #8 and Victoria #22, while Toronto and Montreal don't even make the list? Go figure.

To clarify, the first 20 are top large cities followed by 20 best small cities. So Victoria is ranked #2 best small city. Likely not ranked ahead of Toronto Montreal etc.

https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries...-awards-2014/1

[TheGreatestX]

Because Vancouver is better than Toronto and Montreal...

[Metro-One]

IMO the Victoria ranking makes a lot more sense than the Vancouver one.

Victoria is an amazing city for its size category and the climatic benefits are more pronounced in Victoria than Van (milder, drier, sunnier).

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

IMO the Victoria ranking makes a lot more sense than the Vancouver one.

Victoria is an amazing city for its size category and the climatic benefits are more pronounced in Victoria than Van (milder, drier, sunnier).

It's a travel magazine. I'm guessing they don't care about year around climate unless that is what makes your city special on the global stage (one of Sydney's advantages).

It's all about what cities do well on the world stage, obviously Vancouver has an advantage in it's geography. It is a large city within a big mountain experience. So, while Toronto and Montreal do certain things very well, the competition for big city arts/culture, history and architecture is stiff. Vancouver doesn't have to compete as directly on those fronts, instead it gets to sell itself on something that most other large cities don't have.

[someone123]

Quebec City is on there too. It's a bit weird to consider Vancouver a big city while Copenhagen and Prague are considered small cities.

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Victoria is an amazing city for its size category and the climatic benefits are more pronounced in Victoria than Van (milder, drier, sunnier).

If people cared about those things though wouldn't they just put down San Diego?

This is just based on votes and the reality is most people are only familiar with a few places. In the case of a place like Vancouver I would also guess that the natural scenery nearby plays as large a role as the urban attractions. Would anybody honestly say that they'd recommend somebody spend time visiting the urban parts of Vancouver rather than lower-ranked Rome?

[Coldrsx]

Kyoto #3 hey... I mean she is a nice place to visit, but FAR from anything to write home about.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by someone123

Quebec City is on there too. It's a bit weird to consider Vancouver a big city while Copenhagen and Prague are considered small cities.

This is one of those numbers things. Vancouver and Copenhagen are both cities of about 600,000. But Vancouver is a metro of 2.8 million (2,877 km²) and Copenhagen is ostensibly a metro of about 1.2 million by the usually given stat (Storkøbenhavn, or the metropolitan administrative region).

Of course, Copenhagen is probably a metro of about 2.1 million by Canadian (or international/UN/OECD) standards (2.768,6 km2), or 3.7 million if you go whole hog and bring in Malmo and the Øresund region (20,869 km²), which is part of the greater conurbation but certainly isn't "Copenhagen". It's just a region that is very well-integrated from a transit and commuting perspective, of which Copenhagen is one city. A lot of it is in Sweden, for god's sake.

These sorts of things pop up a lot in Europe, and even here in sparsely populated Scandinavia, because Europe has a denser and better-connected (bus and rail) network of small towns and cities than Canada. It's like how Amsterdam basically scans as a Montreal-sized city even though it's both much smaller (Amsterdam) and much larger (Randstad). It's just hard to compare settlement patterns in Canada with those of the Benelux region.

I tell Canadians that Copenhagen is a little smaller than Vancouver for perspective, which it is. It is significantly larger and more substantial than Ottawa, which would be my next Canadian point of comparison (I have never been to the Alberta cities)

OECD says Prague is a bit bigger than CPH but still smaller than Vancouver.

Metro GDP for Vancouver is $120 billion compared to $150 billion for Copenhagen (CAD), though.

[kool maudit]

edit: double post

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by logan5

The list makes sense for the most part, except how does Vancouver make #8 and Victoria #22, while Toronto and Montreal don't even make the list? Go figure.

To clarify, the first 20 are top large cities followed by 20 best small cities. So Victoria is ranked #2 best small city. Likely not ranked ahead of Toronto Montreal etc.

https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries...-awards-2014/1

Condément Nasty Traveler readers cast hundreds of thousands of votes for their favorite cities around the world in the 2017 Readers' Choice Awards survey

a popularity contest. based on an unrepresentative sample. Not much more than clickbait (unless Montreal makes the top 10)

Kyoto is very pretty.

[Drybrain]

It's not a scientifically determined list; it's just a snapshot of places the magazine's readers enjoyed in the past 12 months. Rather than "Best Cities in the World" lists like this should be called "40 Nice Cities."

[Spocket]

These lists only engender animosity. Especially when all they are is a summary of the opinions of some people who may not have even been to the cities in question.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Spocket

These lists only engender animosity. Especially when all they are is a summary of the opinions of some people who may not have even been to the cities in question.

Not saying this is false, but if it is the case then perhaps some people need to be more mature.

[ssiguy]

How I god's name do Victoria and Vancouver out rank Florence?

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

How I god's name do Victoria and Vancouver out rank Florence?

Well, Vancouver also out rank Rome, Munich, Budapest, Amsterdam, Singapore, Melbourne, London, Istanbul, Bangkok, Hong-Kong... I mean, come on!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

How I god's name do Victoria and Vancouver out rank Florence?

I made the mistake of going to the Vancouver Art Gallery right around the same time that I went to a bunch of major European art galleries and museums.

To be fair the Vancouver gallery was partly closed for repairs. But it was about 1/3 modern photography and 1/3 Emily Carr tree paintings. There was a wall devoted to people throwing salmon into the middle of street scenes and taking blurry pictures of them.

Another sad realization is that Vancouver is full of businesses like L'Éclair de Génie and Ladurée. So much stuff now is just generic and globalized. Or at least so much of what's in Vancouver is like this. As for the other stuff, well, do we think that Condé Nast readers visit Vancouver to go to Wreck to do mushrooms at sunset?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

This is one of those numbers things. Vancouver and Copenhagen are both cities of about 600,000. But Vancouver is a metro of 2.8 million (2,877 km²) and Copenhagen is ostensibly a metro of about 1.2 million by the usually given stat (Storkøbenhavn, or the metropolitan administrative region).

Of course, Copenhagen is probably a metro of about 2.1 million by Canadian (or international/UN/OECD) standards (2.768,6 km2), or 3.7 million if you go whole hog and bring in Malmo and the Øresund region (20,869 km²), which is part of the greater conurbation but certainly isn't "Copenhagen". It's just a region that is very well-integrated from a transit and commuting perspective, of which Copenhagen is one city. A lot of it is in Sweden, for god's sake.

I would be happier if more people just accepted that these things are kind of hard to compare. But instead we get the phenomenon where somebody finds one number somewhere, and another number somewhere else, and they think that because their ranking is quantitative that it is also objective and unassailable. If you disagree with them you must be arguing that 1.2 is greater than 2.3.

I also hate the arbitrary categories. Tokyo is a big city. Vancouver is a big city. The arbitrary cutoff is somewhere south of there. Why not just have a list of places? They probably did this because they wanted greater diversity in the results than what the raw voting gave them. This isn't just a popularity contest, it's a popularity contest with arbitrarily massaged results.

[lrt's friend]

Obviously, a list based on attractiveness to travellers.

But I hate webpages that are so full of crap that take forever to fully load.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

I made the mistake of going to the Vancouver Art Gallery right around the same time that I went to a bunch of major European art galleries and museums.

To be fair the Vancouver gallery was partly closed for repairs. But it was about 1/3 modern photography and 1/3 Emily Carr tree paintings. There was a wall devoted to people throwing salmon into the middle of street scenes and taking blurry pictures of them.

Another sad realization is that Vancouver is full of businesses like L'Éclair de Génie and Ladurée. So much stuff now is just generic and globalized. Or at least so much of what's in Vancouver is like this. As for the other stuff, well, do we think that Condé Nast readers visit Vancouver to go to Wreck to do mushrooms at sunset?

Canada is by all accounts a very very good country.

Since most of the essential boxes are checked off, I guess it's normal for some people to now want to see attain the higher echelons of the pyramid associated with grandeur, admiration, etc.

Believing that Canada or some of its cities are equal to or even greater than other places in the world (even the most prestigious ones) on almost any metric (culture, architecture, atmosphere, etc.) kind of fits into that logic pattern.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by someone123

I would be happier if more people just accepted that these things are kind of hard to compare. But instead we get the phenomenon where somebody finds one number somewhere, and another number somewhere else, and they think that because their ranking is quantitative that it is also objective and unassailable. If you disagree with them you must be arguing that 1.2 is greater than 2.3.

The internet (and people) love ranking lists. It's an easy way to create content without much actual work. Kind of like the job of 'analysts' on TV.

My opinion is this: like what you like. I use lists like these to pique my interest into places I might have not thought much about.

I've been to places that people rave about and they seemed overrated to me. Then there's places that have quite surprised me in a positive way, whilst being somewhat panned by others.

[geotag277]

Originally Posted by wave46

The internet (and people) love ranking lists.

Make a list, get those internet points (clickbait advertising $$$$), because people will share it to forums like this, as if there is anything to discuss that hasn't been rehashed a thousand times before on this exact forum from hundreds of lists that came and went in the past.

I wonder why this justifies it's own thread? Somehow I think if Toronto and Montreal posted a new thread for every list they managed to get on in the entire internet, this forum would just be pages and pages of list threads regarding these two cities.