Opinion
Trams, culture, coffee? Vienna beats Melbourne to coveted crown, again
Associate editor and special writer
Is it possible Melburnians are the only people anywhere who hang out impatiently every year for the report on the World’s Most Liveable City, a ranking exercise undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit?
Reluctantly then, we bring the distressing news that, for the second year in a row, Melbourne is no longer considered the world’s most liveable city.
That honour goes to Vienna, which snagged the top spot last year, too.
Perhaps it's apt enough, given that Vienna tends to inspire long periods of existential thought, which is to say, every day one spends in Vienna seems a little longer than the last.
It’s a city that waltzes at a pace approximately as urgent as one of the interminable operas that jangle the burghers’ jewellery at the city’s opera house, the Staatsoper.
Melbourne can at least still boast of being the second most liveable city.
We can only imagine how soothing this news must come to those travelling at 2km/h on the Monash Freeway each morning, or CBD traders discovering they have been cut off from their customers by chain link fences, or youngsters faced with house prices that either disqualify them from owning a home or consign them to a suburb so far-flung it seems closer to Seymour than Carlton.
After so long at the top, however – Melbourne was the World’s Most Liveable City for a straight seven years before The Fall – the city’s boosters could be excused for thinking dark thoughts about those who compiled the latest index.
The Economist is a weekly magazine published in London, specialising in the dismal sciences of economics and politics.
Its intelligence unit apparently finds it dismal to be working in London.
The city is conspicuously absent from what the unit judges the top 10 most liveable cities. London is judged 13 places beneath Manchester, which sits at spot 35.
Indeed, those living in the UK and America can only dream of Australia and Canada (and, of course, Vienna). Cities in Australia and Canada make up six of the top 10 Most Liveable Cities.
Sydney sits at fifth spot, and we needn't say further about that, as smugness is an unattractive trait.
Besides, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a Sydneysider, has leapt to Melbourne's defence, declaring Melbourne "better any day than Vienna".
Calgary is number 4, and Vancouver and Toronto are ranked sixth and seventh. Osaka sits at third, and Tokyo and Copenhagen are eighth and ninth.
And yes, Adelaide, we are thrilled to declare, is named the 10th most liveable city. In the world.