Best And Worst Places To Live in 2006

The annual Mercer Best and Worst Places to Live list is out for year 2006. And for the fourth year in a row number one is Zurich, Switzerland. I have been to Zurich once some time ago and it is quite nice, but I think far too expensive to be affordable for most people. Zurich is also one of the costliest cities on earth, and has a reputation for being a bit too staid (the Singapore of Europe) for many people. Fact is, there just isn't much to do there.
Anyway, Mercer uses 309 criteria in an objective measurement to choose it's cities for the list. Social, economic an political criteria such as the quality of health care, education, transportation services, and restaurants etc. are the basis. Europe seems to have the most cities on the lists, and all 215 cities entered were judged against New York City (which is number 46 on the list) as the baseline.
Pack your bags, here are the top ten according to Mercer.
1. Zurich, Switzerland 2. Geneva, Switzerland 3. Vancouver, Canada 4. Vienna, Austria 5. Auckland, New Zealand 6. Dusseldorf, Germany 7. Frankfurt, Germany 8. Munich, Germany 9. Bern, Switzerland and Sydney, Australia tied for 9th and 10th
The bottom four for Worst are:
1. Baghdad, Iraq (but Bush seems to love it) 2. Bangui, Central African Republic 3. Brazzaville, Congo 5. Khartoum, Sedan
Some observations by Mercer..
- The top three cities in each held the same spots on the list last year
- The two top American cities were Honolulu at 27 and San Francisco at 28. Most U.S cites stayed about the same in placement, lower than European because of higher disparity in income and poverty there among some segments of the U.S. population nullified the positives of the remaining part
- The top ranked Chinese city was Shanghai, at 103rd place - Eastern European countries seem to be the fastest rising on the lists, largely because of the end of authoritarian governments in the early 90's and
-Asian cities tended to be in the bottom half of the best lists, mostly due to corrupt governments, large pools of poverty and limited economic freedom and mobility.
The criteria is simply objective and does not factor in a cities character uniqueness, ease of lifestyle, upward mobility potential etc. other lists from Mercers do have wide variance with this one, and Mercer does say it is a best guess at best. Soooooooooo what would it be for you, Bangui or Bern? Where would you relocate if you had to or wanted to? Would it be one of the cities I listed or someplace else? Why?.
Maybe I should move to Arkansas and teach there. Well, it sure seems that teachers in Arkansas have a lot of fun. Take the case of Arkansas' retired teachers. The retirement system there recently sent out letters to their retirees that explained how to change the name of beneficiaries on retirement checks in the even of death. But in doing so gave those teachers a toll free number they must still be calling.
You see, the number happens to belong to a phone sex service that specializes in foot fetishes. "Hi, baby! Do you want to massage my feet or suck my toes?" a seductive lady purrs when the line is called. After asking that question she goes on to explain that "foot fetish fun is only 69 cents per minute (Hmmmmmmm I could afford that... er..never mind)". It offers another number to call for "all the hot, one-to-one triple X toe talk you can handle."
How come I never had that much fun teaching here? My retirement system just gives us statistics about benefits, not toe sex. The director of the Arkansas retirement program says that few of the 50,000 teachers given the number have called to complain about the mistake....... I knew they were kinky in Arkansas! Maybe I really should move...