Vienna, Austria's grand capital on the Danube river, offers the highest quality of life of all cities in the world.
What's the world's greatest city? Okay, perhaps that's hard to say for sure, but certain cities do have a reputation. Ernest Hemingway dubbed Paris a "moveable feast," saying that the French capital stays with you for life. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life," English writer Samuel Johnson said. And prideful references to the awesomeness and uniqueness of New York City are too numerous to list.
However, in 2016 these cities may still be remarkable, but perhaps they are not so great to actually live in. The annual Mercer Quality of Living ranking finds that that neither Paris nor London nor New York are especially livable for expats.
Instead, the top 25 list goes as follows:
1 Vienna, Austria
2 Zurich, Switzerland
3 Auckland, New Zealand
4 Munich Germany
5 Vancouver, Canada
6 Dusseldorf, Germany
7 Frankfurt, Germany
8 Geneva, Switzerland
9 Copenhagen, Denmark
10 Sydney, Australia
11 Amsterdam, Netherlands
12 Wellington,New Zealand
13 Berlin, Germany
14 Bern, Switzerland
15 Toronto, Canada
16 Melbourne. Australia
17 Ottawa, Canada
18 Hamburg, Germany
19 Luxembourg, Luxembourg
20 Stockholm, Sweden
21 Brussels, Belgium
22 Perth, Australia
23 Montreal, Canada
24 Stuttgart, Germany
25 Nurnberg, Germany
Paris comes in at 37 on the list. London at 39. New York City is further down the list, at 44.
For reference, Washington, D.C., is 51. In fact, as you can see, no American city cracks the top 25. San Francisco comes highest at 28, just beaten by the Australian city of Adelaide. In fact, Aussie cities do very well on the list, but mostly the list is dominated by Western European and Scandinavian cities.
Mercer's ranking could be debated, sure. The human resource company bases its annual report on surveys that are designed to probe the quality of life in a city for expatriates. The final ranking is intended to be used for international firms to understand how much extra they should pay employees to move to certain areas. While the company doesn't give away its exact formula, it does give an indication of how each city is ranked, with elements ranging from the availability of consumer goods to the "socio-cultural environment" (which they describe as "media availability and censorship, limitations on personal freedom").
For Paris, London and New York City, personal safety may be an issue. Mercer ranks Paris 71st on the list of the top cities for personal safety, while London comes just before it. Notably, the shifting security situation in Paris appears to have cost it dearly in the overall rankings: It has dropped 10 places from last year. If you care less about this or other factors that Mercer ranks highly, you may feel differently about what city is best to live in.
Think these cities are viewed unfairly? A rival ranking designed by the Economist Intelligence Unit last year offered a similar but perhaps even worse diagnosis, with Paris ranked at 29 (before the November 2015 terrorist attacks), London at 53, and New York City at 53. At the top of this list was Melbourne, while Vienna came in second. For their part, the Viennese seem happy but perhaps not excited about their status as residents of the most livable city in the world. The city so frequently tops these lists that perhaps it seems mundane.
"The city is safe, clean, and runs smoothly on excellent public transport," Austrian journalist and writer Klaus Hubner told The Local.
The status quo held at the other end of the list, too: Mercer found Baghdad to be the least livable city in the world, a title it has stubbornly retained in recent years.
© 2016 The Washington Post
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