Mercers Top 20 Most Liveable Cities 2017

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by mhays

I have no problem with US cities ranking low, though I haven't read the criteria. We generally don't have the best infrastructure (especially transit), we often don't maintain what we have, the healthcare system is a disaster, there's a big rich/poor gap, the murder rates of many cities are enormous, some cities have large neighborhoods that are essentially written off...what's confusing here? A city with better transit, less poverty, and fewer murders will tend to do well.

Lists like this do screw some things up. For example they might look at the percentage of local incomes below a certain threshhold...but ignore the fact that even an average income doesn't go as far in an expensive city. Simple, misleading stats typically dominate any compilation like that...necessary to be expedient and "fair" but highly misleading.

Excellent point. This is why I have a problem with people defining affordability in terms of price/income ratios.

[ue]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Climate is an issue for both cities, but would you prefer Montreal's winters or Atlanta's summers? The difference between Montreal and Ottawa being that Ottawa's economy is more stable because it is insulated by the federal government, a more highly educated population, less congestion, better recreation infrastructure. Montreal is a more cultural, dynamic city. The toss up between the fun things and the day to day things.

Montreal has one of the highest university populations in North America. How is Ottawa more educated? Montreal has some of the finest post-secondary institutes in the country.

Honestly, I find Montreal a far more livable city compared to Vancouver. Vancouver has a lot to be proud of, in terms of creating sustainable design, inviting public realms, and reducing auto dependency, but that's all moot if nobody can afford to live there and the job market sucks.

Montreal has that high quality urbanism, excels in transit, cycling just like Vancouver does. It also has a history and very unique culture that Vancouver lacks due to age. Montreal is also extremely affordable and it's job market isn't bad. Vancouver's job market is rather dismal relative to its stature and certainly doesn't help the real estate problems, which are out of sync with local demands. Toronto has similar real estate problems, but it is more related to local demands, and the situation isn't as extreme as the job market there is more robust. Honestly, I think the main reason Montreal isn't as big of a career centre for Canadians is simply due to language. This is also likely part of what insulates the city from global real estate speculation (that and the glut of rentals).

With all that, all that Vancouver really has objectively over Montreal is more grandiose natural beauty, with the mountains and sea. Depending on your sway, Vancouver could be argued to have a better climate, but many people prefer Montreal's true winter over Vancouver's dreary drizzle. Vancouver is also easier for the Anglo hegemony to set roots in, but Montreal has a significant Anglo population and the Francophone element adds a unique culture to the city.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by ue

Montreal has one of the highest university populations in North America. How is Ottawa more educated? Montreal has some of the finest post-secondary institutes in the country.

Honestly, I find Montreal a far more livable city compared to Vancouver. Vancouver has a lot to be proud of, in terms of creating sustainable design, inviting public realms, and reducing auto dependency, but that's all moot if nobody can afford to live there and the job market sucks.

Montreal has that high quality urbanism, excels in transit, cycling just like Vancouver does. It also has a history and very unique culture that Vancouver lacks due to age. Montreal is also extremely affordable and it's job market isn't bad. Vancouver's job market is rather dismal relative to its stature and certainly doesn't help the real estate problems, which are out of sync with local demands. Toronto has similar real estate problems, but it is more related to local demands, and the situation isn't as extreme as the job market there is more robust. Honestly, I think the main reason Montreal isn't as big of a career centre for Canadians is simply due to language. This is also likely part of what insulates the city from global real estate speculation (that and the glut of rentals).

With all that, all that Vancouver really has objectively over Montreal is more grandiose natural beauty, with the mountains and sea. Depending on your sway, Vancouver could be argued to have a better climate, but many people prefer Montreal's true winter over Vancouver's dreary drizzle. Vancouver is also easier for the Anglo hegemony to set roots in, but Montreal has a significant Anglo population and the Francophone element adds a unique culture to the city.

Statistics have said that Ottawa has the highest proportion of university graduates of any city in Canada. It really makes sense given that it is overwhelmingly a white collar city. McGill may be an elite university but on a per capita basis, there are probably more Ottawans attending university than Montrealers.

Say what you will but Vancouver is widely regarded for its quality of life because of its location and climate. There may be rain in fall and winter, but winter's are not severe and it ends much earlier than in the east. Affordability is one issue but that is only one component in liveability. Clearly people want to live there, perhaps, too many.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Statistics have said that Ottawa has the highest proportion of university graduates of any city in Canada. It really makes sense given that it is overwhelmingly a white collar city. McGill may be an elite university but on a per capita basis, there are probably more Ottawans attending university than Montrealers.

Say what you will but Vancouver is widely regarded for its quality of life because of its location and climate. There may be rain in fall and winter, but winter's are not severe and it ends much earlier than in the east. Affordability is one issue but that is only one component in liveability. Clearly people want to live there, perhaps, too many.

Yes, that is another popular presumption. The idea that Montreal's anglo population attends McGill is passé, and in effect has been for a long time. Francophones attend it as much as Concordia U or UdeM and UQAM or Ude Sherbrooke. Likewise, Ottawa and Carleton U both have a significant number of Quebec students of both languages. Proximity remains a bic card in the attendance stack.

Also, Montreal doesn't have as educated a population as Ottawa, that is fair enough. It is also a city with a very different makeup and history. Quebec City has become more nimble because of its size (similar to Ottawa) and has the lowest unemployment rate of the bigger Canadian cities, has strong institutions of learning as well.

Montreal has managed to transform from an industrial economy that not long ago still had 50,000 people working in the garment trade alone and plenty of other sectors have either disappeared or transmogrified. Bigger cities have tougher economic issues to deal with when tens of thousands of redundancies are at play.

[ue]

McGill is one university. There's also Concordia, UQAM, UdeM, Polytechnique, etc. There's about 350,000 students living in Montreal; the greatest number of students per capita in North America.

People may want to live in Vancouver, but the issue is less that too many people want to move there, as there is still much constructed, and moreso that so much new construction goes to foreigners who don't actually live in Vancouver. This drives up the cost of real estate for those living there, leaving people artificially priced out of the market.

Climate is subjective. Vancouver has a mild summer, Montreal has a hot summer. Vancouver has a wet winter, Montreal has a snowy winter. Snow has not prevented cities like Minneapolis from succeeding. For people who actually enjoy heat, Montreal is probably a better fit.

Since you brushed over it, I'll repeat that Montreal's cultural offerings dwarf anything Vancouver offers. It's simply no competition. Now, granted, it's kind of an unfair comparison, seeing as Montreal is far older, more established, and has the English-French duality to it.

In terms of location, again subjective. Montreal is closer to European and emerging African markets, and is embedded in the metropolitan Eastern North American region, which includes New York, Boston, Washington, and Toronto, all of which are more important connections than Seattle or Portland. Beyond cities, Montreal is home to true winter activities, even outside of the mountains, and has great outdoor opportunities, even if Vancouver does excel here overall. Vancouver is also closer to Asian markets and California, which, depending on interests, may be a bigger deal for you.

[Jonesy55]

It's worth bearing in mind what the purpose of any ranking is, in this case it's to help benchmark hardship payments for big companies posting expat employees to other countries. As such some of the variables used probably aren't that relevant to most people living there (availability of international schools, cross-border banking regulations etc) while some things that are relevant to most locals (unemployment rate, cost of housing, local average salaries etc) don't seem to be included as they are not of much relevance to posted expats.

https://www.mercer.com/newsroom/2017...440.1489784042

[Metro-One]

I always find these threads funny.

The sheer amount that people on this forum focus on Vancouver (positive or negative) is a compliment to me. For Vancouver to delight / bother people this much that they must discuss it every single time it is mentioned shows that it has made a pretty large mark on the world for its size.

Honestly though is it really worth debating the difference between a few spots on a subjective list such as this?

Essentially any city that is commonly ranked among the top 30 cities in the world for quality of life is a great place to live. The small differences between them are inconsequential to the average person.

Simply put, they are all winners.

[ssiguy]

Vancouver has a lot going for it but yes, Montreal has a higher quality of life by a significant level. Montreal is a far more important economic & financial centre as well as having a higher standard of living and a cultural vitality that Vancouver completely lacks.

Melbourne has often been #1 but now is down to #16 so one thing is clear.........Melbourne has gone from being nirvana to a cesspool of human suffering in just 5 years. May we all pray for the destitute and suffering of that once great city.

These surveys are so ridiculous.

[Marshal]

I could defend Vancouver until the end of my days. But, no thanks. That's because it suits my lifestyle almost perfectly. Almost all of its shortcomings do not affect me. I also get to get away from the city at a frequency to my liking . . . to places that fill the gaps of home.

I also like cities too much to argue over them. The kinds of cities that rank high on these kinds of lists, but also those that don't: American cities, Brazilian cities, Indian cities, in fact any city I feel safe from murder/kidnapping. So, defend Vancouver. Never. Love Vancouver. Love Montreal.

BUT, I must say one thing about my home town: as this winter ends, and while I like my mountain biking in the rainy rain-forests, and though I have been away four times, if I don't get a sunny day pretty soon I'm going to end it all.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Marshal

BUT, I must say one thing about my home town: as this winter ends, and while I like my mountain biking in the rainy rain-forests, and though I have been away four times, if I don't get a sunny day pretty soon I'm going to end it all.

Funny!

We had what most folks hope will be the last storm of the winter and have experienced some of the worst problems due to lack of visibility, accumulation and winds during the two day debacle. Yet, after a snowstorm, it is usually drop dead gorgeous sunshine and this is what we have now. Even in very cold weather when the sun shines, you can feel warmth, the opposite of the wind chill factor if you will.
This city vs city thing regarding lists is reductive because of what you stated. Cities respond to lifestyle choices and even the inconveniences can look like a charming aspect if we travel and experience other contexts. If I compare highway infrastructure in Montreal to what I saw driving in Boston two weeks ago, I realize how rough ours is to theirs. I am also reminded of the extreme weather, freeze and thaw cycles in a city with huge trucking transit due to our port facility. Bridges and roads take a huge toll here and the technology applied in the first years of highway building was not suited to the harshness of our particular environment. There is no charm in that unless you are a grunge-loving poet. Another no-no in Montreal is the fact that architectural renovations are often shoddy because people don't want to deal with more frequent tasks of upkeeping, so you have fine wrought iron staircases and balconies replaced with aluminum crap, etc... That is the single most negative aspect of visual interest in this city.

[JM5]

Did anyone else notice that the ONLY city in the top 20 where the population doesn't speak a Germanic language is Geneva? That's about as close as you can get to a Germanic city without actually having a Germanic speaking population.

List of best cities in the world for people with Germanic tastes.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by ue

Montreal has one of the highest university populations in North America. How is Ottawa more educated? Montreal has some of the finest post-secondary institutes in the country.

Honestly, I find Montreal a far more livable city compared to Vancouver. Vancouver has a lot to be proud of, in terms of creating sustainable design, inviting public realms, and reducing auto dependency, but that's all moot if nobody can afford to live there and the job market sucks...

You should do a little more research before posting. At 4.7% Vancouver has the lowest unemployment rate of any city in the country, a full 2% lower than Montreal's, so it hardly "sucks".
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/...y-candian-city

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Essentially any city that is commonly ranked among the top 30 cities in the world for quality of life is a great place to live. The small differences between them are inconsequential to the average person.

Simply put, they are all winners.

Of course this post was ignored, but i'm going to repeat it for truth.

The individual rankings of these lists are nonsense, but what it really represents is a compilation of wonderful cities to live in.

You guys can bicker about who's infrastructure is 3% better than the others or whether 5 months of rain is better than 5 months of cold, but you're all going to end up at the exact same place you started, with the exact same preferences that led you there.

Congrats to every city on the list, and the other great ones that didn't make it.

PS You guys are all ridiculous.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Of course this post was ignored, but i'm going to repeat it for truth.

The individual rankings of these lists are nonsense, but what it really represents is a compilation of wonderful cities to live in.

You guys can bicker about who's infrastructure is 3% better than the others or whether 5 months of rain is better than 5 months of cold, but you're all going to end up at the exact same place you started, with the exact same preferences that led you there.

Congrats to every city on the list, and the other great ones that didn't make it.

PS You guys are all ridiculous.

Petty bickering is fun obviously. But of course, you are 100% right. This is all so subjective. These are all great places to live in with pros and cons to every one.

[RCDC]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Where do market values come from?

Desirability in select areas?

[tech12]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

San Francisco (29) is the highest ranking US city, followed by Boston (35), Honolulu (36), New York (44), and Seattle (45). High crime rates in Los Angeles (58) and Chicago (47) resulted in these cities dropping nine and four places respectively.

Interesting that they specifically mention the crime rate for LA, while SF and Boston both have higher crime rates than it.

[hunser]

Meh, Vienna is not that liveable.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JM5

Did anyone else notice that the ONLY city in the top 20 where the population doesn't speak a Germanic language is Geneva? That's about as close as you can get to a Germanic city without actually having a Germanic speaking population.

List of best cities in the world for people with Germanic tastes.

In other words, Northern Europeans have figured things out?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by 10023

In other words, Northern Europeans have figured things out?

Well, arguably yes, but the bigger story is that these global QL rankings almost always favor dour, boring Scandinavian and Anglosphere cities.

They're weighting things that certain countries do well while discounting things that other countries do well, and forgetting that the relative appeal of cities tends to be due to certain intangibles.

[lrt's friend]

Remember; liveability is not the same thing as 'exciting' or 'dynamic'

It is more, where would rather raise a family? Where is day to day living the best?