Genuinely curious about how Tel Aviv, Israel, is considered safer than Toronto, Canada (4.13 vs 3.93).
Yes, a city that is under threat from terrorist rocket barrages and who's national army is currently occupying a foreign state is safer than a city that barely sees homicides.
More people die in Toronto in swimming pool accidents, than people in Tel Aviv due to terrorist attacks. Source: one easy google search away, or start with this: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/
Let's not confuse perceived threats from real ones, backed by data.
How many people die in swimming pool accidents in Tel Aviv? The population-adjusted murder and rape rate seems to be higher in Israel (getting like vs like stats for same years at a city level is a bit harder than doing it nationally.) While it is good to deal with real vs perceived threats, the survey in question explicitly ranked perceived safety so if that is part of the calculation then I think it is fair to discuss the elephant in the room.
Safety: "Each city’s Safety score reflects the reported perception of safety by residents and public data provided by police departments of each city regarding crime rates."
Maybe the residents of Tel Aviv do not perceive their city as unsafe. I guess that people become accustomed to terrorism happening rather regularly.
A city with less homicides but more reported ones in the media is maybe perceived less safe by the residents?
Perhaps we perceive our safety relative to the safety of surrounding areas?
Compare:
"Tel Aviv is dangerous, the threat of war is everpresent and I often hear mortar fire, but the border to Gaza just 45 minutes away is substantially more dangerous"
vs.
"Toronto is dangerous, there's Jane and Finch and many homeless people, the suburbs of Newmarket just 45 minutes away are substantially safer"
Perception of safety intimately ties to Whether or not you're in Survival Mode, but I think overall you are correct. It's interesting, since no one locale would have its own "inherent safety" it would just be known by proxy, which is interdependence at its finest. Laterally, a whole picture and paradigm are formed from insubstantial on-their-own blocks.
It is interesting, too, that safety is typically a feeling you get when there's not much competition for survival. In an age and time of such abundance, it really baffles me how it is taking so long (in some regards) but, as the great Matthew Wilder say, ain't nothin' gonna break my stride. Ain't nothin' gonna slow me down.
In Israel the rocket attacks are a large motivation for collaboration between the military / tech sector and there's plenty of startups that actually focus on providing services around this, there's an app for example that warns people when some rocket attack is supposed to happen.
What you're identifying as cost here is actually a service that a business can provide. The close military connections (also supported by the conscription) are actually an asset for the country in terms of technological progress. Think of it like a messy version of the cold war.
That kind of brings us back to the original point. If there is enough demand that someone has created a rocket attack warning app, I don't consider it a safe city in any sense of the word.
Demand is proportional to perceived threat, not actual threat. This "ROI" is one of the reasons terrorism continues. A city can be quite safe even if its residents are not rational.
You can't blame the terrorists for all that. They didn't shut the city down -- government leaders did. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and we do ourselves incredible damage by it.
That is terribly dangerous logic. There have been times after terrorist events where evacuation couldn't happen fast enough and more people will killed. It is unfair to play Monday morning quarterback with public official's decisions when people's lives are in the balance. Shutting down the city when a bomb goes off which was targeting a mass amount of civilians seems perfectly reasonable to me.
>All this cost the terrorists only $200 in explosives. In your words, billions of dollars in economic damage "is just minor nuisance".
How badly did startup scene in Boston suffer?
Economic damage was the result of was fear and overreaction. Tel Aviv would not scare so easily.
America is probably the most jumpy country to live on and vulnerable to terrorism as a result. London, Paris and other big cities can suck in the damage with smaller cost.
Tel Aviv seems great honestly. Really my only complaint against Israel is the expansion of settlements and the alliance with South Africa during apartheid.
If you look up how many people died in Tel Aviv from terrorism (any kind) in the last 20 years, you will see it is a tiny fraction of all non-natural deaths - far from offsetting the relatively low crime rate.
I think people significantly underestimate the economic power of the United States. For quality of life, income, and opportunity, you'd almost certainly want to be in, say, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City, or St. Louis (none of which are on the list) than Lagos, Nairobi, Bogota, Bratislava, or Bucharest (all of which are on the list).
I know, I know. You think of those as nowhere places. But that's because, again, you're vastly underestimating the economic power of the United States and its cities.
I don't know, I would much rather be in Bratislava or Bucharest than Pittsburgh (the only one out of your list I've been in) in terms of quality of life, income, and opportunity.
Having lived in Bucharest for most of my life (and in many other countries as well), I recommend Cluj if you really want to live in Romania. Bucharest has nice areas if you have the patience to look for them, but its traffic, noise, and pollution are unbearable
The methodology seems pretty good, except maybe in the quality of life group.
If you're black, I can guarantee you that while your colleagues will treat you with respect, you will endure frequent incidents of racism outside of work in Helsinki.
While Singapore is safe, it's not without its problems. The Government there limits freedom of expression and assembly quite heavily.
It would be cool, if would be able to weigh the different categories according to your value system and what you see as a priority for yourself, and see how that affects the rankings. It seems as if the categories are currently equally weighted.
>If you're black ... you will endure frequent incidents of racism outside of work in Helsinki.
I've never been, but I've always heard that Scandinavian countries are usually far better about such things. Gotta say, I'm a little disappointing to learn that I've heard wrong.
I'll mention three things both of which received quite a bit of attention in the local media. Two are directly related to race, one is directly related to immigration but really about race.
About a year ago a Finnish mother of an 11-year-old son, who was adopted from South Africa when he was 6 months old, wrote about the experiences of her son. The son speaks perfect Finnish since he's been raised in Finland. He takes a school bus, but for some reason the school bus frequently doesn't stop for him, if he's at the stop by himself. He was in a national morning TV show telling about his experiences with children AND adults calling him names, exclude him socially and a woman living in the same building told him to leave his own playground. I'm not really surprised by what kids call each other, but adults calling an 11-year-old names is over the line.
The second story is about quite a few stories about people of color using public transportation in Helsinki. That's apparently an environment where racists feel especially emboldened to "express" their viewpoints to minorities. One of the most egregious examples was of an middle-aged woman yelling at full volume at a teenage girl (half white, half black) to leave the bus accompanied by liberal use of the n-word. Finally the woman also threatened to send her dog at the girl. The girl asked the woman to be removed from the bus. The driver refused, so the girl left instead in fear of her well being. Again, an adult threatening a child just because the child was black.
The third incident is the roughly three-month "demonstration" by neo nazis in front of the central train station in Helsinki. These Heroes of the Fatherland (bah!) decided that they'd demonstrate the current immigration practices by having an around-the-clock demonstration. That would've been probably ok, and the police really didn't intervene UNTIL several complaints about the neo nazis instigating fights or straight up assaulting passers by. Quite enlightening of the general attitude of some people in Finland is that the "camp", as it was called in the media, was visited by the Minister of the Interior of the Finnish Government. She is in charge of the police force in Finland. She was photographed giving the neo nazis a thumbs up.
Somewhat related is an incident where a member of another neo nazi organization killed someone in the same area. During another demonstration and counter-demonstration, a 28-year-old Finnish man walked by the neo nazis and spat on the ground in front of them. While he was walking away, one of the neo nazis chased after him and kicked him in the chest causing the man to fall down and hit his head. He died a few days later.
There's a very vocal and increasingly violent portion of the population in Finland who are racist and actively violent against people of color.
I concur that children hurling racial insults is... "acceptable" isn't the right word. Children can be monsters. But holy crap, adults saying stuff like that is inexcusable. Doubly so when they say it to children.
Overall, you paint a very troubling picture. Are these recent developments? By that I mean is this a situation that has gotten worse recently, or has it always been like this?
I haven't lived in Finland for 20 years, so I can't say for sure. Following the developments through the lense of the media, I would say it's gotten worse. Finland, for the longest time, was pretty insular and people's attitudes towards people of color were mostly just being curious.
The neo nazis have certainly become more visible, and more active for various reasons. It's the usual stuff...downtrodden people trying to find things to blame for their situation ("them" is always a good scapegoat), unemployment is high, there are more refugees coming to Finland like every other European country.
And then there's the one political party that is pretty brazenly taking advantage of the situation and advancing more or less pure racism as a policy. They scored big in the last parliamentary election cycle and actually manage to finagle themselves into the coalition that formed the Government. Their popularity has sunk lately to very low numbers, so they won't be anywhere near as vocal or influential after the next parliamentary elections.
There's also a definitely new development where "entrepreneurial" racists have figured out how to organize and profit from the situation. There are a few "for-profit" agitators that mask themselves as "Voices for the Silent Majority" and "Free Speech Advocates of the Highest Order" while spewing hate speech, encouraging violence against everyone disagreeing with them (incl. journalists and critics, or people appearing in viral videos on the "opposing" side) on their own blogs, online magazines or Facebook. These are the people who in the past would've been stapling their manifestos on light poles and other "billboards", but with the Internet they suddenly have a national/global audience. The most visible of them was operating from Spain and was arrested in Andorra for inciting violence against muslim immigrants last week. His trial will be a circus.
That being said, this is obviously not how the majority of people feel or act. It's just that it takes just one person in a bus full of people to ruin it...
Interestingly, as someone (I'm white) who has moved to Finland for an exchange, I haven't noticed this at all. Of course it's very possible that this is because I'm white and don't speak Finnish, but it's still weird to hear this about the country I'm currently in.
These sort of things, btw, are a major factor of why I would not consider moving back to Finland any time soon. I have three small kids with my wife, who is not white. I am 100% sure my kids and her would not have a positive experience in Finland.
As a person who's lived in both, this definitely makes literally no sense. The startup ecosystem in NYC is leagues above Dubai (which is honestly 90% joke, useless startups). NYC is by any reasonable metric (funding, unicorns, exits, etc.) in the top 5 startup ecosystem worldwide.
Agreed. The NYC JS scene is huge, entertaining, and very nicely knit. I've visited offices and been to meetups all around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (and even Jersey). We have our own conferences (EmpireJS and EmpireNode). There are great companies here in a variety of spaces. I believe that NYC, as a city, is extremely conducive to the "startup life".
Happy to see my home base in Austin doing respectably at #13.
But London at 43? Seattle all the way down at 21? I find those results surprising. Is South Korean truly better in terms of gender equality than the USA? Many asian cultures are very male oriented.
I was happy to see it there too, but if Cost of Living for San Francisco is 2.91 and Austin is 3.71, I'm having trouble putting much value in their metrics.
Yeah, after reading through the list and the reasoning, I'm not sure what this has to do with startups at all. It looks more like a "is it worth moving here" index than anything else.
For the Tech section; Vancouver, Canada has a lower salary for the experienced column than for the entry level column. I know tech compensation in Vancouver is poor but I don't think it gets worse with experience.
Best is subjective. I've been in Helsinki and Berlin, and I find very difficult to rank Helsinki above Berlin. There's more than just work for example.
As an Englishman, what gets me is how high the cost of living is in London relative to the salaries which are low when you compare them to the US or Switzerland. Us Brits like to think London is a world-class city with great tech but we just don't pay our people well whilst expecting them to rent tiny rooms... I've lived in the US the last 3.5 years and it has been fantastic. You earn way more over here...
Here's the thing this chart misses. Metros. The value of SF isn't just the city itself but the entire SF Bay Area metro i.e. Mountain View, Cupertino, Santa Clara, Oakland, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, ... I'm still missing a lot of cities but you get the picture. It dwarfs most of the places on this list except for maybe Seoul and the other US metros like LA and NY
Also a lot of people who work in SF don't actually live in SF.
Another big thing missing from this chart that you can't put into numbers are local 'attractions'. For example, if you live in the Bay Area you have relatively close access to Lake Tahoe, Napa Valley, and other really nice spots. With a place like Singapore, you pretty much seen everything over one weekend (Malaysia imo is boring).
The relatively good affordability of SF compared to Berlin lets me doubt the methodology for that part of the score. Seoul and Hamburg are also not similarly affordable, but significantly more expensive than Berlin.
Did anyone even try to scrub the data? Vancouver entry-level and experienced average salaries are $64,916 and $58,029 respectively. So the average experienced tech worker earns less than entry level?
This site is extremely jarring on mobile. Please whoever made this fix that table at least. It renders only two columns at the time and does it terribly.
Yes, a city that is under threat from terrorist rocket barrages and who's national army is currently occupying a foreign state is safer than a city that barely sees homicides.