Friday, June 13, 2008

Things Fall Apart

A couple of weeks ago, I linked to an unfavorable post report from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. A few commenters disagreed and said it's a great city. Mercer Consulting is out with its annual list of the world's best and worst places to live (table here). Vienna is tied with Geneva for second best, behind Zurich. The U.S. doesn't have a single city in the top 25 (Honolulu is 28). And every U.S. city in the top 50 ranked the same as in 2007 or lower; none moved up on the global list. Related, you can probably guess which city ranks as the world's worst place to live (answer here).

Generally I don't take these sorts of lists too seriously. But as I noted at the time, this column was spot-on. As the usual suspects push the "Fifty Forever" plan for bases in Iraq (undoubtedly part of an altruistic effort to get Baghdad ranked at least as high on the list as Brazzaville) we've got a lot of work to do at home.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was in Munich a few weeks ago and it blows away any American city I've been in lately. The train system is just sick. Made me wish I spoke German but, then again, you can get along in Munich just fine with English.

6/13/2008 7:01 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Interesting that Duesseldorf was so high. I worked there last year and thought it was pretty impressive, especially for a European city that doesn't seem to show up on most Americans' radars. But these list are pretty subjective - no way does Barcelona deserve to be below Kobe, or even below Boston or Montreal.

6/13/2008 1:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But, but...Eurabia, Muslim hordes outbreeding Europeans etc, etc.

6/16/2008 2:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting that the top 5 cities in North America are all Canadian cities.

Thanks, Bush !!!

6/21/2008 10:58 PM  

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