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Here are the top 10 most liveable cities of 2016 (Economist Intelligence Unit)

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Melbourne is pretty sweet.
Great restaurants, great night life, great infrastructure, friendly people, boxing day test. I sort of miss living there.
 

Razorskin

----- ------
As a Montreal resident, the city has been in decline for a long time. The infrastructure is crumbling, everyone is corrupt to the core and the economy is slowly going down.

The only thing pretty much left intact is the culture. Montreal is lots of fun.


This is how I feel as well.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
LOL Vancouver, might as well put San Francisco on that list. C'mon, list.

LOL Toronto

-25% of our subway cars on the major east/west line don't have AC
None of the Montreal ones do, lol.

Still, our transit is considered better than the TTC's, I hear the TTC's is notoriously unreliable so that sucks.

And to be honest how diverse are those cities? They all strike me as homogeneously white.
loooooool, how did you come to this ridiculous conclusion. Toronto is more diverse than NYC and Vancouver is borderline more Asian than white right now.
 
Toronto haters trying to blow up Toronto's 'issues'. As an aggregate, Toronto is an amazing city to live in. Compared to other major centres, it is cheaper, safer, more open to diversity, very accessible to both cultural and disability services, and pretty dynamic for a city most would write off as 'boring'.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
LOL @ Toronto being the most "diverse"/"Multicultural"/etc city on the planet. Are we really going to start this again! "But the guy at BBC said!" Oy.

This list from these people seem to be the nearly the same every year. I always like showing this list to my friends actually living in these cities. "Bullshit" is what they say, but isn't the grass always greener?!

I've never been to Melbourne but I feel like I have to check it out.

Toronto haters trying to blow up Toronto's 'issues'. As an aggregate, Toronto is an amazing city to live in. Compared to other major centres, it is cheaper, safer, more open to diversity, very accessible to both cultural and disability services, and pretty dynamic for a city most would write off as 'boring'.

Nope. Need more liquor stores.
 
LOL @ Toronto being the most "diverse"/"Multicultural"/etc city on the planet. Are we really going to start this again! "But the guy at BBC said!" Oy.
Nope. Need more liquor stores.

You can always 'stock up'. No one keeping you from getting drunk at home at 3am, or 9am frankly.
Also, humour me a list of more multicultural country centres.
 
Dubai/German ERP implementation project (and no not SAP) that started in Dubai and I ended up around Germany. Love my job i see so many places.

I've heard from many people that working in munich can be tough for people from somewhere else, not only foreigners, I've heard it mostly from northern germans. But I have no first hand experience.

Germans in general are harder to crack and get to know them, and in munich I think its even worse than the rest of germany.
But once you've entered the inner circle its cozy.

Still, culture in munich, the sights, the landscape, proximity to lots of nice lakes and the mountains makes it my favorite german city.

I wonder where Berlin, Munich and Istanbul are on that list.
 

Brinbe

Member
LOL @ Toronto being the most "diverse"/"Multicultural"/etc city on the planet. Are we really going to start this again! "But the guy at BBC said!" Oy.

This list from these people seem to be the nearly the same every year. I always like showing this list to my friends actually living in these cities. "Bullshit" is what they say, but isn't the grass always greener?!

I've never been to Melbourne but I feel like I have to check it out.



Nope. Need more liquor stores.

breh... no. Toronto is easily the most diverse city on Earth. You can talk shit about our shitty transit, our boring puritan liquor laws, our troubling gentrification, but lol we are super diverse. That's not in dispute unless you've never actually been here.
 

Derwind

Member
Toronto haters trying to blow up Toronto's 'issues'. As an aggregate, Toronto is an amazing city to live in. Compared to other major centres, it is cheaper, safer, more open to diversity, very accessible to both cultural and disability services, and pretty dynamic for a city most would write off as 'boring'.

Dude, you're projecting, just because people have something critical to say about Toronto doesn't mean they have hate for it.

And as someone who lives in Toronto, I call bullshit on it being cheap, it's undergoing a gentrification renaissance. Unless you're talking about a housing development complex in the lesser known parts of Scarborough.

LOL @ Toronto being the most "diverse"/"Multicultural"/etc city on the planet. Are we really going to start this again! "But the guy at BBC said!" Oy.

This list from these people seem to be the nearly the same every year. I always like showing this list to my friends actually living in these cities. "Bullshit" is what they say, but isn't the grass always greener?!

I've never been to Melbourne but I feel like I have to check it out.

I agree that this list is pretty bullshit for the most part but Toronto is an extremely diverse city fam.

And this comes from someone whose lived in Toronto his whole life.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
You can always 'stock up'. No one keeping you from getting drunk at home at 3am, or 9am frankly.
Also, humour me a list of more multicultural country centres.

We can go on and on about what makes a city multicultural or diverse and never reach agreement. To me it's about how many different cultures are present in a city in a significant size so that it has a visible impact on the city. So, of course, that would give bigger cities an advantage, but I would think that only makes sense. I live in NYC currently, and my GF is from Toronto, a place I've visited about 9000 times, and both of us think it's quite a stretch to think that Toronto is more of a multicultural city than NYC (or other major international cities). Of course, it is much larger.

I certainly recognize that some people put more of a value on other diversity/multicultural statistics, e.g., percentage of people born outside the city/country living in that city, or use more of a percentage analysis rather than a raw number analysis. That's fine, not like there's an objectively "right" way to look at things.

And my problem with Toronto's liquor situation is the monopoly! The stores are actually quite gigantic, but I can't help but feel that if the LCBO doesn't stock something in particular, you are SOL.

breh... no. Toronto is easily the most diverse city on Earth. You can talk shit about our shitty transit, our boring puritan liquor laws, our troubling gentrification, but lol we are super diverse. That's not in dispute unless you've never actually been here.

Oh I've been there countless times, probably far more than any person in Toronto in NYC many times over. I'm not saying it doesn't have diversity. I'm saying that I wouldn't say it tops every other city on the planet. If you've been to these other cities and still think otherwise, then that's cool. Different opinions and all :)
 

sikkinixx

Member
Vancouver is liveable? If you are rich sure.

No doubt. It's great being in a place that has the highest fuel prices in the country, less than 0.8% vacancy rates for rentals that now involve bidding hundreds of dollars a month over asking price just to secure a place, astronomical housing prices, below Canadian-average student funding, expensive transit (that is pretty poor the second you leave Vancouver-proper). At least we have fairly good paying jobs and the best economy in Canada, even though that's really because of the Chinese buying up all the real estate for insane prices.

If my family didn't live here and I wasn't about to have a kid we'd be gone. Lovely scenery, beaches and generally-nice weather isn't enough anymore.
 

Elitist1945

Member
Nice to see some Canadian cities up there. Would love to move to Toronto/Vancouver but holy hell I don't think I'd be able to afford it anytime soon.
 

I do not agree with the wholesale gentrification of the city. But compared to other major centres, be it American, European, or Asian, I think we have it lucky. Lived most of my adult life as lower income, but I still managed to get by. And I never had to deal with 'dangerous' areas either. Not to mention, most places in the world could never provide the social support of a city like Toronto could.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
"Toronto had the poorest infrastructure score of any city in the top 10 list."

No shit.

Still my favorite subway system because you can see all the way through the subway cars. I thought that was just amazing. Then we had to get out at a stop and walk 40 minutes to our destination, haha. Oy.
 

Derwind

Member
Still my favorite subway system because you can see all the way through the subway cars. I thought that was just amazing. Then we had to get out at a stop and walk 40 minutes to our destination, haha. Oy.

That's pretty new cars though. And only on the young/university line, basically for the richer areas of Toronto.

Our Transit situation is pretty stunted for the most part.
 
Oh I've been there countless times, probably far more than any person in Toronto in NYC many times over. I'm not saying it doesn't have diversity. I'm saying that I wouldn't say it tops every other city on the planet. If you've been to these other cities and still think otherwise, then that's cool. Different opinions and all :)

The thing about Canadian diversity is the fact we celebrate it. Think Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Little Italy, little Poland, little Portugal, Chinatown, Vietnamtown, Koreatown, Japantown, little Portugal, Carribean Festival, little India. Those are just the named major centres. There's the large Afghani community by the Science Centre, the Sri Lankan cul-de-sac at the entrance to Cabbagetown, the melding of cultures and societies that is St. James Town, the Dufferin stretch devoted to South American businesses. These are just the landmarks. Anyone willing to travel and explore is capable of finding and experiencing more.
 

Derwind

Member
Oh I've been there countless times, probably far more than any person in Toronto in NYC many times over. I'm not saying it doesn't have diversity. I'm saying that I wouldn't say it tops every other city on the planet. If you've been to these other cities and still think otherwise, then that's cool. Different opinions and all :)

I can get behind this.

Toronto is extremely diverse but I can see how the argument can be made for many other diverse cities in the world.

As a Somali-Canadian from Toronto, I am still always impressed by the diversity of Toronto.
 

Senoculum

Member
We can go on and on about what makes a city multicultural or diverse and never reach agreement. To me it's about how many different cultures are present in a city in a significant size so that it has a visible impact on the city. So, of course, that would give bigger cities an advantage, but I would think that only makes sense. I live in NYC currently, and my GF is from Toronto, a place I've visited about 9000 times, and both of us think it's quite a stretch to think that Toronto is more of a multicultural city than NYC (or other major international cities). Of course, it is much larger.

I certainly recognize that some people put more of a value on other diversity/multicultural statistics, e.g., percentage of people born outside the city/country living in that city, or use more of a percentage analysis rather than a raw number analysis. That's fine, not like there's an objectively "right" way to look at things.

And my problem with Toronto's liquor situation is the monopoly! The stores are actually quite gigantic, but I can't help but feel that if the LCBO doesn't stock something in particular, you are SOL.



Oh I've been there countless times, probably far more than any person in Toronto in NYC many times over. I'm not saying it doesn't have diversity. I'm saying that I wouldn't say it tops every other city on the planet. If you've been to these other cities and still think otherwise, then that's cool. Different opinions and all :)

I think New York is widely multicultural. No doubt. They speak over 800 languages there. But New York is a mega city in the same category as London, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

Toronto has 51% of its population immigrant born. That's diversity bro. Hard truth.
And the LCBO delivers bro.
Plus all our dispensaries....
And that low crime....
 

jstripes

Banned
The thing about Canadian diversity is the fact we celebrate it. Think Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Little Italy, little Poland, little Portugal, Chinatown, Vietnamtown, Koreatown, Japantown, little Portugal, Carribean Festival, little India. Those are just the named major centres. There's the large Afghani community by the Science Centre, the Sri Lankan cul-de-sac at the entrance to Cabbagetown, the melding of cultures and societies that is St. James Town, the Dufferin stretch devoted to South American businesses. These are just the landmarks. Anyone willing to travel and explore is capable of finding and experiencing more.

Earlier this year a US economist declared Scarborough (one of Toronto's boroughs) "the best ethnic food suburb I have seen in my life, ever, and by an order of magnitude."

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...s-scarborough-as-best-ethnic-food-suburb.html

As someone who lives in Scarborough, I can vouch for this. I've gotten so used to being surrounded by countless types of restaurants and markets that I take it for granted.
 

Pancake Mix

Copied someone else's pancake recipe
Everytime these lists come out i hate canada and australia so much more.

How is Norway not the best on that list?

And to be honest how diverse are those cities? They all strike me as homogeneously white.

It takes a special kind of ignorance to assume Toronto of all cities is homogeneously white. A homogeneous population doesn't make a city bad whatsoever either, but it's certainly not the case with Toronto anyways, which is incredibly ethnically diverse. You should have done a quick google search.

But it's fine, if you hate Australia and Canada for having nice cities then you're really, really not welcome anyways.
 
Earlier this year a US economist declared Scarborough (one of Toronto's boroughs) "the best ethnic food suburb I have seen in my life, ever, and by an order of magnitude."

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...s-scarborough-as-best-ethnic-food-suburb.html

As someone who lives in Scarborough, I can vouch for this. I've gotten so used to being surrounded by countless types of restaurants and markets that I take it for granted.

Ive been saying this for years now. Scarborough has the best food for the cheapest prices.
 
Earlier this year a US economist declared Scarborough (one of Toronto's boroughs) "the best ethnic food suburb I have seen in my life, ever, and by an order of magnitude."

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...s-scarborough-as-best-ethnic-food-suburb.html

As someone who lives in Scarborough, I can vouch for this. I've gotten so used to being surrounded by countless types of restaurants and markets that I take it for granted.

That's the thing. It's not some curated, tourist-exploited, hipster areas. Toronto's character comes from these focused, but not focused centres where the city really breathes.
 

Senoculum

Member
That's the thing. It's not some curated, tourist-exploited, hipster areas. Toronto's character comes from these focused, but not focused centres where the city really breathes.

Very true. To this day, I have had the best Mongolian hot pot from Scarborough. And I actually went to Mongolia.
 

Oppo

Member
Toronto definitely has its problems but a lack of perspective is among them IMO... I get crusty about the terrible council and traffic and construction too but when I travel anywhere in the world off the beaten path, then come home... yeah it has a lot going for it.
 
Still my favorite subway system because you can see all the way through the subway cars. I thought that was just amazing. Then we had to get out at a stop and walk 40 minutes to our destination, haha. Oy.
We have those in Melbourne too.
tkEyK01l.jpg
 

Sober

Member
Still my favorite subway system because you can see all the way through the subway cars. I thought that was just amazing. Then we had to get out at a stop and walk 40 minutes to our destination, haha. Oy.
To be fair the bus/streetcar coverage is fairly decent so unless your destination was completely out of the way or out of Toronto proper you probably don't need to subject yourself to a 40 minute walk, just take a bus or streetcar that takes you closer and then walk the remainder.

That being said, a 40 minute walk probably would still get you faster than waiting for a TTC bus or streetcar just to show up.
 
But our universities in Vienna are pretty low ranked.

Also in regards to terrorism, we have a thriving community of Salafi here, some of the Paris attackers got their asylum through Austria and there's the UN city here (Civil War amirite)
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Poor Lagos. Things must be pretty rock bottom if you're considered even less stable than Damascus in 2016.
I suspect Boko Haram probably has something to do with that. :(

It takes a special kind of ignorance to assume Toronto of all cities is homogeneously white.
I know right

A homogeneous population doesn't make a city bad whatsoever either, but it's certainly not the case with Toronto anyways, which is incredibly ethnically diverse. You should have done a quick google search.

But it's fine, if you hate Australia and Canada for having nice cities then you're really, really not welcome anyways.
Well said.
 

navii

My fantasy is that my girlfriend was actually a young high school girl.
I like Melbourne and Auckland very much. But as a Sydneysider I am way more concerned about property prices going up (which is happening all the time) than a potential terror attack, because of this I dismiss the article. Im not saying Sydney deserves to stay in the top 10, but I think their reasoning is wrong.

Obviously terrorism concerns me as it should concern anyone and I hope we steer clear of these tragedies, but I don't think this concern has impacted my way of life anywhere near as much as paying extra rent, or the sad fact that Ill never be able to buy my own place outside of some miracle. I never heard ANY one of my friends mentioned they are concerned with terrorism.
 

Derwind

Member
I like Melbourne and Auckland very much. But as a Sydneysider I am way more concerned about property prices going up (which is happening all the time) than a potential terror attack, because of this I dismiss the article. Im not saying Sydney deserves to stay in the top 10, but I think their reasoning is wrong.

Obviously terrorism concerns me as it should concern anyone and I hope we steer clear of these tragedies, but I don't think this concern has impacted my way of life anywhere near as much as paying extra rent, or the sad fact that Ill never be able to buy my own place outside of some miracle. I never heard ANY one of my friends mentioned they are concerned with terrorism.

This. Thank you.

The most shallow of concerns is about the propensity for terrorism when you're more likely to get hit by a drunk driver than be effected in any personal way from terrorism or whether are public works are decent in these list.

But the actual cost of living is ignored, the access to the things/centers that actually make the city nice to live in...ect... is really only for the people that can afford the lifestyle these cities offer.

When you have to commute for hours on the road to get to work in the center of the city or have to budget your bus token each month (praying the fair doesn't keep going higher) and find the rent is really draining you of a good portion of your disposable income. Then yeah you'll find this list an eye roll.

I'm glad some posters really can afford to enjoy what the cities have to offer but some of us are finding actually living in these cities a growing toll each year.
 

Jeels

Member
If a city isn't affordable it is literally by definition not liveable because you won't be living there.

Not all the cities on the list fall under that category though.

I like the us news and world report list way more as it factored in things like affordability.
 

Grandi

Member
Helsinki?

Shaquille-ONeal-Cant-Stop-Laughing-As-He-Watches-Funny-Online-Videos.gif

Why the hate? The only real downside I can think of is the expensive housing (thanks to the bureaucrats, strict building regulations and inadequate zoning). The cost of living is also high but that's true throughout Finland. At least we're not Norway or Switzerland.
 
Maybe, but I bet they're filled with deadly spiders and venomous snakes.
They are distractions from the true threat that is dropbears. When it comes to snakes, about 3 people in Victoria, Australia (Melbourne's state) have died from snakes in the past 15 years (and about 1 to 3 per year in Australia as a whole). And there was one death from a spider in Australia since the late 70s, with anti-venom getting better. :)
 

Senoculum

Member
If a city isn't affordable it is literally by definition not liveable because you won't be living there.

Not all the cities on the list fall under that category though.

I like the us news and world report list way more as it factored in things like affordability.

The slums of India and the "suburbs" of China are affordable. But they're certainly not livable.

There are so many lists and countless indices, but I think the trend for a positive and attractive city is that... Well... It has safety, job opportunities, diversity, accessible healthcare, and food options, and an appropriate cost of living. Most of the cities listed aren't abnormal in these trends nor is it exessivly impossible for the middle class to enter and have a good quality of life. I imagine most Gaffers are millennials, but they forget that on average they'll be living a long time and will be able to afford things. We have a retirement thread that can help! The housing market in Toronto isnt going to collapse - we endured the last financial crisis because we're natural fiscal conservatives. Yeah, some homes are in the millions... But they're not exactly neighbourhoods you're suppose to be looking at, are they? Some of my friends are buying landlocked properties btw, and they're all 28 or older. Toronto exists beyond its central core....
 
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