Looking for a great place to live? Seeking the very best places in the world, measured by a detailed index that considers health, public facilities, education, politics and the environment? Then go to Zurich, Switzerland. Or nearby Geneva. Closer to home, Vancouver ranks third, Vienna, Austria, is fourth, and if you don’t mind a long trip, Auckland, New Zealand, comes in fifth.
These five cities top the rankings in a recent worldwide survey of quality of life, carried out by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, an American company that’s now the biggest corporate consulting firm in the world. They advise clients across the globe on business relocations and corporate strategies. Every year, Mercer ranks over 200 cities worldwide on a complex scale of 39 “quality of life determinants,” including medical and health factors (levels of healthcare, pollution and public sanitation), education standards, culture and recreation opportunities, political stability and safety, crime rate, natural environment, and public services and transportation.
No prizes for guessing the city that festers at the bottom of the list: Baghdad. With classic understatement, Mercer records that Baghdad has slumped to last place on account of “ongoing concerns over security.” Keeping Iraq’s capital company in the urban basement are places we rarely hear about and probably couldn’t find on a map: Bangui, Brazzaville, Pointe Noire, Sana’a, Ouagadougou, Nouakchott and N’Djamena. All these poverty-stricken cities are to be found in post-colonial Africa, ravaged by disease, poverty, political instability and corruption.
The business analysts at Mercer think globally. The cities that round out the Top 10 are Bern (Switzerland, again!); Copenhagen, Denmark; Frankfurt, Germany; Sydney, Australia; and Amsterdam in The Netherlands. The list makes gloomy reading for Americans and Brits. The highest-ranked American city is San Francisco, 31st on the list but actually ranked 24th due to numerous ties higher in the table. New York, Boston and Portland, Oregon, are 39th, and tied for 42nd respectively. The only other American cities to scrape into the top 50 are Pittsburgh, Chicago and (who would have guessed?) our own Winston-Salem, which pops up surprisingly just ahead of Barcelona! Having spent time in Winston and Barcelona, I can’t understand that ranking!
Denting the pride of English people everywhere, London comes in a mediocre 36th, outdone by the Irish, whose capital, Dublin, is ensconced at number 23.
The tables make fascinating reading, but analyzing some of the factors at work behind the rankings is also instructive. Almost every city that makes the top 50, whether in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Japan, has good public transportation, mostly rail-based systems. While other factors vary, this element of public infrastructure is consistent, forming a key component of the living and working environment of all great cities.
I was struck by rail transit’s reliable role in creating great cities recently in the context of yet more anti-light rail diatribes in the local media, and by the foundation of a bizarre pressure group, called C-FAST, or Charlotteans For Affordable And Sensible Transit. Instead of light rail for all, what I think this group really wants is more buses for ethnic minorities and wider roads for their own cars. Local arch-conservatives Charles Held and Mike Castano are leading the charge to hold us back from future prosperity.
I really can’t understand these folks; they seem hellbent on ruining Charlotte’s chances for decent development and a fine quality of life. We may never make the top 50 cities, but it would be nice to get on the list! Keeping the white middle classes in our K-12 school system and continuing to upgrade UNC Charlotte into a top-flight research university will help. Becoming more tolerant of ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians is a major challenge. Cleaning up our environment wouldn’t hurt either. But creating a new model of transit and land use is essential.
Our closest role model, Atlanta, with its massive freeways and mega-sprawl, was the lowest scoring American city of the lot, ranking a measly 76th! Atlanta’s poorly designed transit system also holds simple lessons for us. The heavy rail MARTA system was designed purely as a transportation scheme, and detailed land use planning was not part of the region’s thinking until some recent retro-fits, like Bell South’s Lindberg Center, have sought to remedy this crippling defect. Too little, too late.
The key fact about properly designed light rail of the sort we’re building in Charlotte is that it provides the catalyst for more efficient types of development, and provides more opportunities and choices for residential and business location in the coming decades. Opponents of light rail in our community bend statistics to support their pre-formed ideology of opposition. I prefer common sense. When the top business consulting firm in the world ranks the greatest cities, and they all have fine transit systems, the evidence speaks for itself.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2004.
