Living Just Enough For The City

Auckland - #5

How do you like your city?

Recently, an outfit called Mercer Consulting came up with their annual list of the Most Livable Cities in the World.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which provides advice to multinational companies on international assignments, has come up with a global ranking of the world's most livable cities based on 39 key quality-of-life issues.

Consultants rated each city on a variety of factors including the level of traffic congestion, air quality, and personal safety. Also included are political stability, currency-exchange regulations, political and media censorship, school quality, housing, the environment and public safety as reported by expatriates living in more than 600 cities worldwide.

Zurich, topped the list this year, followed by Geneva, and Vancouver and Vienna, which tied for third.

The highest-scoring U.S. city is Honolulu, which came in at No. 28.

Here are some notables:

Auckland - 5 (Most South Islanders think Auckland is too crowded and

never like to go there. On the other hand, Kimberly is

jonsing for a big city shopping spree)

Wellington - 12 (Like little San Francisco, minus the homeless)

San Francisco - 29 (Like Wellington, with weapons

and bums)

Portland - 46 (Good choice Rick, bad choice Josh)

Houston - 68 (Nice for Cindy and Larry)

Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Tucson, Yakatut...not on the list.

Baghdad, once again at the bottom. It's hard to fathom why nearly 300,000 Americans have volunteered to live there.

The complete list:

http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/livable_cities_worldwide/index.asp?sortCol=index_2007&sortOrder=DESC&pageNum=1&resultNum=100

Make of it what you will.