The more I travel, the more convinced I am that the American experiment with car oriented cities was a disaster that will take untold billions of dollars to rectify. It's affected everything from public safety (e.g. police can no longer walk a patrol), to loss of community (people don't really shop in the same place they live), lost productivity (stuck in traffic), and on and on and on.
I'm very encouraged by recent, walkable focused, mixed-use development around mass transit stops in the DC area. If they're successful, they could quickly pay back the tax dollars spent getting the transit built, and lead to a model for development in the U.S. In other words, they're building more classic European style city centers, but as all new construction, and even better, informed by the mistakes and success of the last few decades.
I'm not sure it would ever get rid of the suburb (there's too many reasons to not want to raise your children in the city), but there's innovation there too. Many newer suburbs are being built with walkability in mind, usually with a small commercial core with groceries, a coffee shop, laundry and a few restaurants, many have mass transit shuttle stops and commuter lots nearby and with telecommuting becoming more common, there's less of a need to make the daily drive. I live in a suburb like this and have at least a dozen restaurants (from fast food to high end), two coffee shops, laundry, a gym, a Tae Kwon Do school, a bike shop, 2 ice cream parlors, a grocery, a movie theater a couple salons, a music shop, a medical practice, dentist, chiropractor, orthodontist, optometrist, liquor store, a bank and more within a short, comfortable 5-10 minute walk from my house. I'm also surrounded by green space and parks, schools and swimming pools are walkable and we're planning on building out space for a public library and other amenities soon. I telecommute most days and if I have to go to work I take the bus into the city. Other than my weekly client site visits I pretty much don't drive my car. In my region, this development model accounts for easily 40-50% of the new developments.
European cities aren't without problems (awkward living accommodations in old buildings, lack of handicapped or elderly accessibility, etc.), but remind us that before the auto lobby took over and screwed up urban design, cities could be built to high density, very livable, very human scale and that doing so makes wonderful places to live and work.
It doesn't strike me an any more or less drivable than anywhere else in Europe. It's certainly not Amsterdam.
The entire SWPL fascination with non-driving cities, or for that matter opposed to sprawl, is just weird. So some people like to drive: That doesn't oppress you.
I personally love suburban cities. Everything is so easy: You can hop in your car and be anywhere you want in 5-25 mins. Meander about, get lost, have fun: Driving itself is relaxing and enjoyable (I never go during traffic times).
I now live in a walkable city and just do not enjoy the 5-25min walks to get where I want. I'd rather drive. Public transport, even in cities with great infrastructure, is soul crushingly slow and inefficient. I've lived in places with some of the best subway systems on earth, so they say, and I choose: Never again.
Call me lazy, that's exactly what it is, but some people do prefer driving.
> So some people like to drive: That doesn't oppress you.
I love driving too. But relative to walking or public transit, driving is hugely resource-intensive, it has high environmental costs, you get traffic problems if too many people do it, and it requires costly investments in public and private infrastructure -- road construction and maintenance, along with huge amounts of real estate devoted to parking -- that end up being paid for by drivers and non-drivers alike.
In an (economically) ideal world, we would properly tax all the negative environmental externalities, ban free parking, and charge a small fee for the use of public roads. Then everyone could make an informed individual decision about whether their enjoyment of driving is worth the costs. With the huge subsidies drivers currently enjoy, that's pretty much impossible.
>In an (economically) ideal world, we would properly tax all the negative environmental externalities, ban free parking, and charge a small fee for the use of public roads.
Totally on board with you!
Of course, there are supposedly large subsidies to public transport as well - and just think of the Muni busses, which would get the double whammy of having to internalize all of the costs you list PLUS the government subsidies!
Until the externalities are internalized, though, there's no need to go on an anti-suburbia anti-car crusade. Maybe suburbia would become more popular with all of the externalities fixed: Private busses could take much toil out of long distance car commutes.
The two major subsidies for cars are gas (which should cost several times its current US price) and parking (which is often provided free by businesses using otherwise-valuable real estate). Neither of those subsidies really apply to public transit, even buses, though transit does receive relatively minor subsidies of its own.
> Until the externalities are internalized, though, there's no need to go on an anti-suburbia anti-car crusade.
Precisely the opposite: once the externalities are internalized, how anyone spends their money is no one else's business. But until that point, cars still have huge negative externalities, i.e. they are actively hurting society, so it's perfectly reasonable to crusade against them!
1. Parking provided by businesses is not free. It's already internalized. Only free city parking is not internalized.
2. You show only that the governments are failing to internalize these costs. Don't punish the users: punish the governments. They're the ones in the wrong.
2. No one's calling for the guillotine for all car owners (that would include me!). But democratic governments are a function of their citizens. If externalities are not being internalized, it's because there is some powerful faction -- drivers, in this case -- that benefits from the status quo. Yes, the US govt is dysfunctional, but go ahead and try surveying the US public about a carbon tax that would raise gas to $10/gallon. It's not just some abstract 'government' that favors subsidies here -- it's pretty much the entire citizenry.
Governments are controlled by people (at least with democracies), people want cheap subsidized private transportation, so the people get what they want until its not tenable anymore.
> Public transport, even in cities with great infrastructure, is soul crushingly slow and inefficient.
Wow. Then how would you describe:
1. A daily 45 minute commune through barely moving traffic
2. Driving around a walmart/tj maxx/home goods/target... parking lot for 5 minutes just to find a space
3. Almost never having to interact with (or even look at) anyone in your community since when you are not inside your house, in a cube at work, sitting in a chain restaurant booth, or shuffling between a maze of aisles trying to find laundry detergent; your sat in a steel box, isolated from everyone else.
No only would I call you lazy, it also seems that you're quite antisocial.
1. Sprawl cities have shorter commutes [1 - compare sprawl king LA to NYC].
Even within dense places like Manhattan & EU cities, commutes take a long time. Whilst studying abroad in EU Subway Wonderland, my ~3mi subway+walk commute took 20-40mins. In Sprawl City USA, my 15mi commute took 15-20mins, with easy parking both sides.
2. This is common in dense urban cities: Parking in urban cities is a nightmare. Parking in suburban sprawl cities is a breeze.
>2. This is common in dense urban cities: Parking in urban cities is a nightmare. Parking in suburban sprawl cities is a breeze.
It seems like you missed the point entirely of samtp's comment on this one. He wasn't comparing "taking a long time parking" to "taking a short time parking", but was comparing "taking any time parking" versus "not having to park at all".
>3. Never seen the movie Pi?
No. Would you care to elaborate or educate us on its relevance to the topic? I'm not trying to be HN-passive-aggressive in a "tell me so I don't have to Google it" way. I looked it up, don't quite get what you're saying, and don't have the time to watch an entire movie this very moment.
EDIT: Removed my final question because you answered it elsewhere.
2. Not sure there is a point to be had, then. Suburban places virtually always have ample parking (many claim there is too much parking!). It's not an inconvenience...
3. It's a great movie, you should see it! My point is simply that even living within NYC, you're not ensured to have social interaction. And likewise living in suburbia doesn't doom one to have little social interaction.
My brother lives in Vienna. He usually parks his car, which he needs for family visits and the odd trip to IKEA, and then leaves it untouched for weeks, since it is easier to move around the city without it than with it.
I'm the exact opposite - the idea of spending 5-25min in a car, when I could be walking, sounds dreadful. I probably walk 500 miles a year or more, simply because I don't drive. I can't imagine moving back to a suburb.
Much of Washington, DC, and the close-in suburbs, was built for a certain level of automobile traffic. Dad carpooled to work, Mom did the shopping on the days that Dad wasn't driving, the kids took a school bus or walked to school. On the average, you had a car per household. The streets worked well for that level of traffic.
Now two automobiles per household is standard. Mom works, and the kids may well be in a private school that they must be driven to. Narrow streets have cars parked on both sides. Main streets don't efficiently handle the volume of cars on them. The configuration of the Beltway works miserably at rush hour volume, when many cars entering on the right from River Road have a mile or less to fight across three lanes to get to I-270.
I am not oppressed. I neither envy nor resent those who drive. I just think that after a certain level of traffic it is inefficient.
I didn't say that. What I implied was that Vienna is much more walkable than a place like LA. Los Angeles will never appear high on a list of most livable cities -- despite having lots of services, nice climate and loads of culture.
But you could probably pick any major European city at random, claim it was "most livable" or "best quality of life" or whatever and it would be reasonable.
Actually, what's very interesting is how high Australian and New Zealand's cities frequently rank in these kinds of surveys. At least with Australia, there's enough of a shared development model with the U.S (big space, resource extraction, etc.). that when I've been there, cars were a necessity in general, but the urban cores were really nice and walkable.
it's bad for everyone: takes the wealth out of the cities - which means bad schools in the cities.
it leads to segregation.
It wastes massive amounts of time/energy commuting.
It makes you fat if the only exercise you get is the walk from a parking lot to your destination. why do you think the US is the fattest country in the world? sprawl.
I don't like to disclose such information on the internet, even if all of our posts are easily indexable and identifiable.
I've lived in several cities both EU and US.
But my personal experience shouldn't be the driving factor here: I have different preferences from others. Some people love NYC, others hate it. Some love LA, others hate it. (I love both, but couldn't live in either long term)
My point is only that the motion to villainize driving and sprawl is bad. You don't have to like sprawl, but you should allow others to live it should they so choose.
I'm interested because they vary hugely. 'Sprawl' (I don't like the term because it implies it is bad) can be very nice to live in and some of the biggest public transport cities (like London) getting to work can be awful. But the devil is in the detail as they say. There are wider economic questions to be asked too - use of arable land? are restrictive planning laws directing worse economic outcomes? are 'local communities' of social and economic benefit? should we be building housing which isn't the most high-profit kind? IMO careful consideration of these should drive development but it's never done.
Don't forget about how it develops isolated and street-naive teenagers in the suburbs who are completely unable to go anywhere interesting without a parent till they're 16 (or older in many jurisdictions where the driving age has been creeping up and rules disallow teenagers from giving each other rides). Remember the woman who let her 10 year old take a city bus to school and back in NYC (something which most any 10 year old can master after one ride) and got accosted on network TV for her carelessness?
Sorry, but your teenie being able to get anywhere easily on their own is not always a great solution. Lack of safe affordable housing drove many into the burbs, the gated communities that some became merely copied the gated buildings some lived in.
Many cities are not walkable at all, they are far too large to be so. Sure some have subways or the like, but going by my friends account its an hour by train on good days to and from work. Most of his friends bring their lunches because local eateries are not a good use of money on a day to day basis. As for walking, yeah if the weather permits it.
The writer James Howard Kunstler believes that the American choice of suburban-oriented development was the "greatest misallocation of resources" in history. His TED talk on the topic is worth watching.
I think this is a very salient point. I'm glad to see him focus on terrible urban design as well.
Pre-WW2 public spaces and areas are beautiful wonderful places that people spend significant fractions of their yearly income and travel across the planet just to spend a few days in.
The world really would be a better place if we followed what he's advocating here. I'm so heartened to see many new urban projects following this exact plan. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/tysons/
Another good source on human-scale urban design is Nathan K. Lewis. He has a great set of postings on traditional cities. An interesting point is the surprising commonality of organic urban building throughout the world, with the exception of the US.
His recipe is mass-transit, "really narrow streets," and mixed-zoning.
"...American experiment with car oriented cities..."
America is almost 3,000 miles from coast to coast. 1500 miles or more top to bottom. When the auto became popular, most people lived on farms.
What part of that was an experiment? Perhaps you just meant that in a poetic sense, if so, apologies.
But it bears pointing out, especially to a younger HN audience that might have spent most of their lives on an education or corporate campus, living in easy reach of mass transit -- the way things are now are the result of necessity and efficiency. While I'm discounting the role of urban planning, for the most part it's not like there's somebody somewhere pushing buttons on a huge SimCity.
Once again, apologies if I overreacted to your phraseology.
And while most American suburbanization[0] wasn't explicitly centrally planned, it was very much the intentional result of federal policies such as FHA loans that were initially only for single-family homes (and FHA redlining of many urban neighborhoods), the mortgage-interest tax deduction, and the federally-funded construction of urban freeways.
No apology necessary. I grew up pretty rural and the automobile was the lifeline to education, goods and jobs. It took a half hour to an hour to get anywhere at all, but it was definitely necessary.
What I'm specifically referring to is that once you're in an urban center, is it more like a European or even an older American (pre-car) city where you can walk locally, public transit outside of that and then drive, or is it like Houston, LA or Dallas? Where the difference between living in the "city" and living in the country is that it shaves half the time off your drive to get anywhere and you have to drive to accomplish even basic daily tasks like grocery shopping?
LA is the quintessential example where urban planners decided to build around the car and invested heavily in freeway infrastructure instead of robust public transport (and the urban development model that implies). Building cities around vehicles and not around people (as has been done for millenia) is the experiment I'm talking about, and I think it's proven to not be the better model.
I think it can swing wrong the other way as well. Building only on the scale for people to walk around causes friction with entering or leaving the urban "zone". If you want to go visit a city, you have no place to put your car, this hurts the economy of the city. And if you want to leave the city, maybe for a trip, or to pick up a bulk good you can't hand carry, you may not have a car to do so (this is partially addressed by services like zipcar and similar).
Density is returning to American cities, seemingly because the roads could not keep up with what they promised. Houston has typically been a perfect example of urban sprawl, but as of late it has been rapidly getting denser and land values are skyrocketing the closer you are to these areas.
I live in Houston and walk to work. It's just a 2-3 minute drive for me to get to a grocery store, a movie theater, restaurants, and museums.
But I'm unmarried with no dependents. I couldn't afford to buy a home here (they're seemingly all $1M+).
As a consequence, with a city the size of Houston, simply increasing the density probably does not have the desired effect. The urban core of Houston will be completely re-invented in the next decade. It will consist almost exclusively of only two groups: (1) the rich; (2) the well-off singles and DINKs (dual-income-no-kids). If you're not a successful lawyer, doctor, executive, or someone with pre-existing land ownership, you will never be able to own a home in inner-city Houston in 10 years (barring some economic crash). Even now, it takes two highly paid engineers to comfortably support a family life in many inner-loop areas. Moreover, very few new single-family homes are being built--it's almost exclusively townhomes intended for childless young professionals.
Everybody else will be pushed to the suburbs, which will actually greatly exacerbate the traffic problem and further insulate the vast majority of kids from urban life.
This is why I'm of the opinion that it would actually be better for everybody if more emphasis were put on suburban development. Make the suburbs less suburban, provide them with more infrastructure, create more walkable centers in them, and also invest more in providing public transportation from the suburbs into downtown business districts. There are already a few park-and-ride bus services (e.g., from Sugar Land or the Woodlands into Downtown, Greenway, etc.), but most suburbanites, so caught up in the car culture, won't swallow their pride and use them.
I don't disagree. I fall in the DINK category, but even we cannot afford many of the places that are inside the loop, or even near there. I know some people who do live in the Montrose area (rapidly rising price), and they do so by putting 3 single developers in one house. Once you get married, that becomes less attractive, and you end up forced out of the loop (like we did) - I'm in the process of buying a house conveniently located under 5 minutes from work just inside BW8, and I still can't walk there - doing so would require crossing the Beltway at high traffic times, and I don't care to greatly increase my risk of death five days a week.
I'm actually a big proponent of public transportation and increased options for travel, and am really glad when they get implemented, but purely for selfish reasons - it means less people on the roads. I'll gladly pay a bit more in taxes to make the roads less of a logjam at most hours of the day.
'awkward living accommodations in old buildings'
I always find it amusing when Americans equal old buildings with subpar living conditions. Most of the apartments in Europe's typical 19th century buildings deliver an extremly high standard of housing that would just not be profitable to build today.
I've been in wonderful first world apartments in Europe, and wonderful old apartments in Europe. Many old original flats are beautiful and great places to live - I agree.
But many old flats are not like these. They're weird semi-renovated things with modern amenities shoe horned in wherever they can fit, water heaters in living rooms, hallways snaking their way around, clothes washers in hallways or kitchens, aggregated bits of older flats glommed together to make new ones resulting in stairs in the middle of bedrooms or living rooms, tiny tiny kitchens so small that if you put a mini fridge in you can't open the door all the way so the fridge ends up in one of the bedrooms, or bedrooms which consist of a door that open to a wall, but if you look up there's a crawl space big enough for a mattress so it's called a "bedroom" (and so for privacy you get a full size door) and on and on and on.
I've been in flats that were the result of gluing two or three different flats from adjacent buildings together, only the floor heights were off by a meter, and you end up with things like an extra half bath down by the bedrooms, which useless so it gets used as a closet, so if you want to shower you walk down a half flight of stairs to the en-suite full bath that's in the bedroom-converted-to-a-living-room, or where the old door was for the second flat, it's been painted over and nailed shut, but if you open it, it opens into your neighbor's kitchen (which used to be part of the hallway in that building).
Or the one that had a fully renovated kitchen, but they didn't put space in for the fridge and oven at all, so you end up cooking on the coffee table in the living room on hotplates and the fridge is by the front door.
Why bother designating rooms for anything if they're just going to be used as semi-all purpose rooms?
You can get all the modern conveniences, sorta, but they might be in weird forms or stashed away in strange places.
These are not in poor areas, but in central parts of Paris or Barcelona or Rome or wherever. Decent areas, and some of them were multi-million dollar places that simply wouldn't be acceptable, or up to basic safety and construction codes in the U.S.
I agree with your sentiment about sprawl being toxic, but I think that time and population migration will solve the problem via urban renewal. The suburbs seem to be (If you believe the Brookings institute) on the wane as families grow smaller and can be accommodated into the tighter spaces of a city. Few of my friends have moved outwards as they've had children, and even then it tends to be those who grew up on farms, and moved to cities for technical jobs.
Also what about giving us the complete list. I suppose the 499$ you need to pay to get the report give you more meat than simply the list, so why not give it for free ?
On these "most livable" city indexes, I wish they would take into account how much it costs to live there compared to wages. San Fransisco is high on their list, but from what I'm hearing, it's really not the panacea that these lists often make it out to be. High wages, but higher cost of living and horrible living conditions compared to the Midwest, for example. I have a friend who just bought a two-story, four bedroom house with two acres of land in a nice area of Beer City, USA (Grand Rapids, Michigan) for $90,000, and has a 10 mile, 10 minute commute to a downtown office where he's making $70,000/yr. He can drive his own car and find a place to park in a nicely cultural city of ~200,000.
I don't live in Grand Rapids, but if I were moving somewhere I'd be looking for a city like that. That is what I would consider highly livable. Can you find a two-story house with an acre or more of land in SF for not much more than your yearly salary? I want a list of cities where salary and cost of living are taken into account along with culture and safety.
I pay $450/mo for a 1000 sq ft, two bedroom townhouse apartment (turned the second bedroom into a theater). Gas is < $3/gal. My commute in peak traffic is 15 mins. Parking is free everywhere. If you can tolerate living in a < 100K population city, Midwest is extremely livable:
Living conditions? The midwest has been and is still being hit with one of the worst winters in a few decades.
Also I hear that "land is cheap elsewhere" argument all the time. You're right; if I was 82 and wanted to settle down I'd buy a ranch somewhere in the palm desert for 100k, but I'm not. I'm young and I want to work. I'll live in my shitty apartment in SF long before I whither away on some plot of land in the midwest any day.
Yes there are cheap houses in swamplands; probably a dollar an acre. But then what? Cool I have cheap house totally removed from all the action.
> You're right; if I was 82 and wanted to settle down I'd buy a ranch somewhere in the palm desert for 100k, but I'm not.
I'm not even sure why 82-year-olds do this. It's pretty much guaranteed you'll lose your ability to drive before you lose your ability to keep a home. Why set yourself up for the heartache of finding out you can no longer live in the house you just bought because it's inaccessible by anything but your private car you can no longer use?
What's the problem with cold winters? Unless it is below 0 F (or say, 20 F) or something, you can still get around. It is quite rare that you have such long streaks of sub-zero temperatures. Go out and learn to XC ski, snow-shoe, or just dress appropriately if all you are interested in is walking the streets. Many people I know in the mid-west bike even through winters. Some dedicated folks even bike several miles to commute even on the coldest days of winter.
Besides, there are many good universities and large and small companies in the mid-west, in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These states put together have about 1/3rd of all the Fortune 500 companies, to give you an idea of the economic activity. So the comparison with ranches and deserts doesn't hold. That said, traffic isn't universally great in the mid-west. Chicago is a notable exception, but then you have plenty of public transport facilities in Chicago as alternatives to driving around.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Did I mention anything about swampland? Did I mention anything about a desert? Did I mention anything about being an 82 year old withering away?
I mentioned a nice house in city limits with a short, quick commute downtown to work in an office making almost as much as the house costs per year. Weather plays a factor, true, but I wouldn't want to be living in a shitty apartment in SF when the San Andreas goes off again either. I'm not trying to be a walking tourist board for a city I don't even live in, but describing a 200,000 person city with the best beer in the country, a major hacker convention every year (GrrCon) the yearly ArtPrize exhibits, and a great local music scene as "a desert" or "swampland" is a pretty shitty move on your part.
You seem to have dismissed every single word I said as soon as you read "midwest". That's not very polite, nor is it appropriate for any kind of discussion.
I didn't mean to imply the midwest is a swampland; I'm from the midwest. And I was serious about the a place in the desert. I wasn't comparing it to anything, the palm desert outside of LA is amazing and I literally want to live there one day.
The swampland is more of an exaggeration for the way people talk about why they don't want to move to SF, as if the cost of rent is the only reason one lives anywhere. And the San Andreas thing is another common fear I hear a lot and have myself. But why should something like fear stop one from living anywhere?
I live in SF. I commonly hear things from people in Chicago where I'm from like "yeah but I'm paying $400 for an apartment in Logan Square(which isn't true any more obvi)" or "yeah but you have to worry about deadly earthquakes". It gets kind of old because I didn't move out here to pay cheap rent nor did I move our here to wait for an earthquake to kill me.
I appreciate the civil tone, sorry if I flew off the handle.
SF might be great for some, but it's not for me. Unfortunately, SF, Seattle, and Vancouver always top the lists and they're all places I wouldn't dream of living in any time soon. If I'm moving, I don't want to take a pay cut. I wouldn't trade a $50,000/yr job in the midwest for a $100,000/yr job in SF, because I'd actually have less money than I do now.
I'd rather be rich in a swamp than poor in a city. I just really wish there was a list of great cities like Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, or Kansas City where you don't have to fight traffic for hours a day, you can actually buy a house somewhere close to work, but you can also work for a great company doing something exciting and make a livable wage doing so. As you allude to, most lists of "best mid size cities" point to retirement-age people.
SF is the only city in the Bar Area that has absurdly high rent. You could live in Oakland or anywhere down on the peninsula for much cheaper than you would in SF. That would allow you to earn a large wage and still pay cheap rent. It's all in the same geographic area; SF is like Manhattan and everywhere else are the boroughs.
I live in Vienna and I see these surveys all the time. I moved in Vienna 2.5 years ago. Vienna is a good place to live (otherwise I would have left) provided you don't care about things that are simply not available, for example no real IT sector, no startup scene etc. It's okay, but it's nothing spectacular. I don't understand what these people find so fascinating about the city. My friends share my opinion too.
I guess the people doing the surveys simply care about completely different things in life compared to myself. I read their impressions, and I either don't care about those things at all, or I find them completely wrong. The reviewer simply has different expectations than myself. For example, a couple of week ago I've seen another article like this. Among other things, the author liked the huge variety of beers and cheese found in Vienna. I don't know exactly why this matters for such a survey but whatever. Anyway, I happen to be somewhat of a beer and cheese aficionado and in my opinion Austrian beer is terrible, bland, and all the same. Go to Belgium to find good beer. There are not too many types of beer. And don't get me started on the cheese.
Of course these things are subjective things, but because they are subjective things they have no place in such an article.
Other issues are more subtle, for example, nice people. Every article claims Vienna has nice people but doesn't divulge either the nationality and cultural background of the reviewer, nor the way said reviewer interacted with viennese people. For example I don't find anything nice about viennese people because I grew in a country where attributes associated with nice people are different than Austrian attributes about nice people. These people may be nice, I'm sure they are, but I don't see it. Similarly, I'm sure they see me as a misanthropic, asocial, arrogant individual.
It's the same like with restaurants, an american will complain that european restaurant service is precarious, I will complain that the western-european restaurant service is annoying and offensive. The cultural background is different, expectations in social settings are different. Articles like this skip over all this stuff.
Anyway, there are some really nice things in Vienna but no article I've seen mentioned them. They are subjective things, but most of what these article say is subjective.
I live in Vienna too and one thing I like in particular is that despite I live in a metropole with its 2 million inhabitants, I can jump on my bike in the summer, ride for twenty minutes to Donau, Vienna's river, and go for a swim, while being in nature. I can't think of any other city that offers what a world city has to offer, and being able to enjoy nature to the extent that I can swim in its river without worrying about pollution. Beat that.
>Of course these things are subjective things, but because they are subjective things they have no place in such an article.
Liveability seems rather subjective to begin with, but if you poll enough people you'll converge upon a widely shared view. Doesn't make it right, or make your views wrong, just means that most people are more predisposed to a certain opinion: Vienna is a highly livable city. I know I quite liked it when I've visited family there, and would actually be interested in living there if I had appropriate work.
I personally would find a city with good beer and cheese selection to be more liveable than one with out, but that wouldn't be the only factor. Personally I think the best beer is in California, though.
A startup scene also can be considered a negative by many, if you look at the SF protests vs. techies lately. (The animosity was small when I lived there, but seemingly has grown over the years.)
You are probably right. However, presumably we tend to underestimate how horrible most places in the world really are. Compared to the average city, perhaps Vienna really is quite good.
I agree, the criteria are highly questionable. I can understand that low crime rates are important for everyone, but for the most part the quality of life is determined by what you want to do in a particular place.
Is Vienna a great place if you want to work for a Hedge fund, if you are a jazz musician, an opera singer, a tech startup founder, a chef, an industrial electrician who fixes oil rigs, a UN diplomat? They don't ask these questions at all.
I can tell you what this ranking is about. It's a completely pointless PR gimmick by an HR consultancy.
Dunno about that. i5invest? sector5? metalab? There's lots going on here in that regard, but you probably have to be a smelly student to have access to it ..
So, I passed by Vienna kayaking down the Danube. We liked the “Neu Donau”, basically an unused arm of the Danube with super ultra clean water. People go there swimming, surfing or just for a walk, it’s super cool. We didn’t really like the city center, way to posh for us. But then again, we were coming to Vienna on a kayak from the woods, that might have skewed our vision of the city.
But overall, if you can, go visit Austria, it’s a small gem. They have this tradition of doing naked sun baths everywhere, but you do get used to that after a while.
By the way, I lived in Munich. It’s an amazing city. Lakes, mountains, rivers, you name it. And German people are super nice, people stereotype them way too much. I am looking forward to go back to Germany soon. I am really not a big fan of Dutch/Nordic speaking countries.
After living in Stuttgart for the last 5 years, I can tell that these stereotypes describe some Germans perfectly well but the important thing here is those account for less than 1% of the population.
The remaining 99%? Those are these very friendly people who have this amazing ability to be relaxed and efficient at the same time.
I live there, and in my experience, Stuttgart is not a very good city to live in, and I know quite some people who share that sentiment. Swabians are famously unapproachable, though I do respect them a lot.
Thats one reason I'm moving to Munich - anyone knows a good company to work for there? :)
These Mercer livability rankings are based on quality of life for expatriates working for multinational corporations. Every year these rankings make the headline rounds but articles fail to mention that detail or explain why that's important. In particular these rankings don't account for cost of living in the way you would expect if it were a real "quality of living" survey. This becomes a ranking of "how well you can live in a city on an unlimited budget".
I live in Vienna. I don't understand how this is the most liveable city in the world - unless by liveable, it means "concrete jungle monstrosity - with good public transportation".
I honestly think this is one of the most oppressive cities in the world, and I just don't get how it managed to gain this acclaim, every single year. I guess things must be really bad in a majority of the western world.
The thing is, the city is really not beautiful. A majority of the population live in apartment buildings that were constructed in the 1870's, where the primary requirement was "pack as many people into the city block as possible but don't go over 6 stories". This means that for a majority of citizens, the sky is but a thin, dull strip.
Perhaps its the public transportation, the access to food (Billa's are everywhere) and .. the welfare state. In fact, I'm convinced its only because of the state of welfare that people think Vienna is so great. Remove the AMS from the equation, and Vienna is a barely suitable concrete jungle.
It's somewhat similar to Prague, yes the center is nice, but most people live in very ugly buildings built during communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel%C3%A1k).
No, I don't think they're less monstrous - the fact is that mass populations living so closely together, in architecture that does not motivate their interaction as a neighborhood, is a real problem. There are endless rows of these city-apartment buildings, built to maximize space and landlord profit, which simply puts people into boxes and discourages interaction. Europe is full of these cities. So maybe that is why Vienna - where its entirely unfashionable to despise the city for its physical oppressions - gets the accolades every year.
Berlin, at least, makes an effort to build community in the neighborhood and of course Paris has centuries of history with precisely this notion in its street courses; Vienna has always been an imperial place, and it shows. The impersonality of the architecture seems to have been long-since inherited. They even re-built it this way, after the War .. so I believe in fact the "Concrete Jungle", "City-As-Machine" thing is so strong here, that its just not noticed any more ..
Actually, the quality of living in one of those city-apartment buildings can be quite good. Other than in many other big cities, there are no pure commuter cities in Vienna (every district also has some old village infrastructure at its core) and the level of social segregation is rather low. It sounds to me as if you were rather dissatisfied with your apartment. Maybe you should consider moving to a different part of Vienna.
There are very few parts of Vienna that do not feature as a concrete jungle in my mind. Part of the problem is that Viennese citizens just don't know any different; they think that because they've got heating and access to the S-Bahn, that's all they need.
Sorry, but no: a bit of blue sky would also be nice. Neighborhood retreats that are not commercially driven would be great. Destruction of every 5th apartment building to make a community space would be fabulous.
But it seems the Viennese cannot even deal with turning a shopping district into walking streets without wanting to cannibalize each other. The problem with Vienna is that it promotes dissent between neighbourhoods; even the preposterously named Districts manifest this fact. The Viennese have segregation, isolation, and discrimination built into their city as architectural forms; without some dynamite, there isn't so much hope to change the condition, alas.
What about the Donauinsel, the Prater, the Lainzer Tiergarten, the Wienerwald, and all those smaller parks scattered around the city? I don't think have had much time yet to learn to know Vienna.
I know those parks quite well, and have been here quite long enough to have formed this opinion (>5 years). These parks are wonderful - but they are not within the city limits, and require the use of transportation systems to get to them.
They are great places - no question about that - but the city itself remains monstrous to live in even if you are able to spend a few hours in any of those parks when you can.. Wienerwald is not in the city limits, Donauinsel - just barely - Lainzer Tiergarten also on the periphery. Prater is within the city limits, but this has to be one of the least interesting 'natural spaces' ever created..
I don't know which century your Vienna map is from, but the Wienerwald, the Donauinsel etc. are all within city limits. As I said before, maybe you should considering moving to another district. It took me, erm, 15 years to move beyond the Gürtel -- i.e. closer to the above places. Today I'm asking myself what took me so long.
The city itself is what took you so long. Take a good hard look - did you always know what was beyond the wall?
For the record, I live outside the city limits, at the tip of the Donauinsel, and frequent the area often.. yes, Donauinsel is 'in the city of Vienna', but it still takes on average 3 train rides through the concrete jungle to get there for the average citizen.
Wienerwald is definitely not something I'd consider 'within the city limits' - its close, and the city is surrounded by it, but again - we're talking about the city, not its surrounding towns. The city of Vienna is a concrete jungle, and has been so for centuries - its citizens, and this is my point, have become acclimated to it and no longer see The Wall. Its still there, though. You just demonstrated this fact..
I've been living here for the last six weeks. Coincidentally, yesterday was the initial induction session for candidate startups shortlisted for 'Go Silicon Valley', organized by the Austrian Economic Chambers (WKO). For such a small city, there certainly seemed to be a respectable number of startup teams...
Today was sunny and warm(ish), so I left my apartment and computer, travelled 30 minutes across town to Heiligenstadt,and shortly after was lying on a hillside overlooking the city. Quiet and refreshing.
Coming back into town by tram, then walking, the bustle of the streets around St Stephen's cathedral was quite a contrast. Now I'm back here in front of the machine, picking away at a cake, amused at this timely article. Vienna certainly is beautiful in parts, grungy in others. But so far, all the people I've met have been friendly and accommodating. Transport is excellent. The cakes are amazing.
This is common in many industries as well. Practically every car model gets awarded "Best XYZ 2014!". I have definitely noticed the trend with companies in my area, of which 5 seem to all hold the title of "Best Place to Work".
I think it's interesting to see which cities (and countries) continually feature in the top 10-20-30 spots in each different report - and which ones don't.
"Most liveable" always depends on what factors are important to you. If you average out everything I guess Vienna looks quite nice: Low income disparity, good social security system, low crime rate, etc.
But if you're a HN reader it might not be the optimal place to live for you: A population that's in general quite hostile to entrepreneurship, insane amounts of bureaucracy, laws that make it unnecessarily hard to run your own company, etc. Apart from that the weather is terrible, large parts of the population are hostile to immigration and are quite racist, people are grumpy all the time, ...
It is interesting that besides Auckland, the top three cities basically share the same culture - Munich shares more with Vienna and Zurich, than with Berlin or Hamburg.
That culture is deeply rooted Catholic, bourgeois, orderly with little crime and corruption.
Ever plan on visiting Vienna? Why not live there and build tools for other developers. We are hiring at Codeship (https://www.codeship.io) for our Vienna office.
And if you ever come visit the city let me know at flo@codeship.io. Happy to show the HN crowd around town.
Like many typical Austrians/Viennese I've got a love/hate relationship with Austria/Vienna.
On the one hand it's very gemütlich (cosy/comfy -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemütlichkeit) to live here but on the other hand it can be quite boring as even very young people often act like they are already retired.
I believe there aren't many places in the world where you enjoy as much actual freedom as you do in Austria but people mostly don't make much use of it, good luck with getting people engaged in anything interesting (maybe life here is already too comfortable).
Not having the cultural "baggage" of having gotten pampered your whole life, Vienna could very well be the ideal place to be as you might be able to actually enjoy its benefits.
You should definitely come and visit, there is tons of stuff to see - it's somewhat of a cultural Disney Land with an amazing history. While doing so you could dip your toes into what it would mean to live here, there are quite some Americans around who really like it and have been living here for many years.
In general it's quite nice. As a viennese native living abroad, i especially miss the public transport system and some of the theaters. Vienna also has far less social segregation than other cities of it's size (~2M), looks extremely clean is quite safe. Do you have any more specific questions? You can post them here or contact me per jabber/email (in my profile) if you want.
Granted, I visited for a couple of days, but I was positively and deeply surprised by it.
Everything seems nice. The city is Beautiful. Public trams go everywhere and the transport system is top notch.
Cons: they speak "Bavarian German" and they seem to be paranoid about the internet (more than in Germany). They have cold winters as well if I'm not mistaken.
you wouldn't want to say that in Vienna though :). We are pretty proud of our Austrian German. Winters are cold, and summers are hot, but still fine. Really nice to live here though.
the good thing about vienna (or maybe austria) is that it's the biggests city in austria.
if something interesting is going on in austria, most often it's happening in vienna. (culturally, jobwise, universitywise,...).
so austria is very centered around vienna in my experience.
Also, it used to be part of a much larger country, wasn't it (Austria+Hungary)? I've been there only many years ago, but somehow I had the impression of a slightly multicultural air about it.
Vienna is nice IF you speak German sufficiently well to get along with the Austrian dialect and you are willing to cope with those four months of harsh winter where you hardly ever see the sun.
Apart of that it's pretty much like every other German speaking city, quality of life is high, but so are the taxes.
Vienna is good overall, but it's passive smoking hell. 99% of all clubs ignore non-smoking laws according to a recent study and you often find particle concentrations higher than on a busy road inside various cafes/clubs and washing all your clothes after a night in a busy place is a must. For some people this will be a sign of relaxed, "laissez-faire" style life, for others like me this is unbearable and I hate it.
The Mercer study Reuters mentions is, by the way, apparently only based on a few publicly available key statistical indicators and not on actual surveys.
I will take this seriously when Mercer and Reuters will move their corporate headquarters from the 6th Avenue in Manhattan and Canary Wharf in London respectively to Vienna.
Can anyone comment on the startup/tech scene in Vienna? I need to move there for some immigration reasons and am trying to figure out what kind of jobs I can look forward to. Also, how easy can it be to get by at the workplace with english + broken German ?
I'm very encouraged by recent, walkable focused, mixed-use development around mass transit stops in the DC area. If they're successful, they could quickly pay back the tax dollars spent getting the transit built, and lead to a model for development in the U.S. In other words, they're building more classic European style city centers, but as all new construction, and even better, informed by the mistakes and success of the last few decades.
I'm not sure it would ever get rid of the suburb (there's too many reasons to not want to raise your children in the city), but there's innovation there too. Many newer suburbs are being built with walkability in mind, usually with a small commercial core with groceries, a coffee shop, laundry and a few restaurants, many have mass transit shuttle stops and commuter lots nearby and with telecommuting becoming more common, there's less of a need to make the daily drive. I live in a suburb like this and have at least a dozen restaurants (from fast food to high end), two coffee shops, laundry, a gym, a Tae Kwon Do school, a bike shop, 2 ice cream parlors, a grocery, a movie theater a couple salons, a music shop, a medical practice, dentist, chiropractor, orthodontist, optometrist, liquor store, a bank and more within a short, comfortable 5-10 minute walk from my house. I'm also surrounded by green space and parks, schools and swimming pools are walkable and we're planning on building out space for a public library and other amenities soon. I telecommute most days and if I have to go to work I take the bus into the city. Other than my weekly client site visits I pretty much don't drive my car. In my region, this development model accounts for easily 40-50% of the new developments.
European cities aren't without problems (awkward living accommodations in old buildings, lack of handicapped or elderly accessibility, etc.), but remind us that before the auto lobby took over and screwed up urban design, cities could be built to high density, very livable, very human scale and that doing so makes wonderful places to live and work.