English
If you are tired of the stress of a hectic life you might need to migrate across the planet to find a little corner of paradise. Even with no ocean or beach or a wild forests, Vienna has been selected as the city with the best quality of life for the second consecutive year. The Research is conducted as part of a project of the New York firm Mercer Human Resource Consulting which each year considers 221 cities around the world and analyzes their standard of living based on ten categories and 39 factors include political, social and economic freedoms and stability as well as the quality of public services and cultural and artistic venues.
Also considered relevant are sustainability and environmental care, the quality of public water, air, and the presence of parks in the urban layout. As Josef explains Papousek, Austria Mercer administrator “among the most important criteria for classification are security, efficiency of infrastructure, political stability, and social and economic factors” These features won Vienna first place in the world for their living. For more information check out www.mercer.com
With 108.6 points, Vienna has maintained its score from 2009 and is closely followed by Zurich (again second) with 108 points. Geneva is third, while the fourth position is occupied simultaneously by Vancouver, Canada, and the New Zealand city of Auckland, both with 107.4 points. In the last position is the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and the U.S. city that is topmost on the list is Honolulu, which probably is not really what comes to mind when we think of the typical American city.
Though Vienna has proved a winner, it is clear that it was not at all the factors considered in the study. The capital of Austria, for example, ranks much lower when considering the environment and sustainability, categories in which the best-performing cities are almost all outside Europe.
It should then ask: for what reason it was decided to attach more importance to cities where environmental sustainability is less important, in a historical moment in which one of our major concerns is limiting our impact on the environment as we did before? Lists like this are a provocation: among the factors chosen and rated for a better quality of life are mostly features that enable easy consumption. But what would happen to study other characteristics such as the “stress level of the people”? Perhaps neither Europe nor the United States would find themselves so high up on the list. This classification, on the one hand, suggests a link between quality of life and consumerism, quite consistent with the goals of the organization (a capitalist enterprise in one of the largest economic centers in the world).
menschauser
Why not find out for yourself when you rent apartments in Vienna if it is really the best city in the world? It could be an interesting use of your critical thinking powers.
Translated by: salome antigone
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