Turkish Forum

Tag: liveable cities

  • What makes Helsinki and Istanbul ‘liveable’?

    What makes Helsinki and Istanbul ‘liveable’?

    Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak

    Earlier this summer, the style magazine Monocle published its annual Quality of Life surveys where it identifies what it judges to be the top 25 cities in the world. It is an interesting reflection on what makes people excited to live where they do.

    Helsinki, Finland's capital, tops a list of 25 cities in the 'Quality of Life' survey by the style magazine Monocle. John Borthwick / Lonely Planet
    Helsinki, Finland's capital, tops a list of 25 cities in the 'Quality of Life' survey by the style magazine Monocle. John Borthwick / Lonely Planet

    Helsinki, Finland’s capital, topped the list.

    I know what you are thinking: why would a city where the sun doesn’t shine much for a large proportion of the year get rated as the best place to live in the world?

    Monocle says Helsinki’s selection is due to its “fundamental courage to rethink its urban ambitions, and for possessing the talent, ideas and guts to pull it off. Crime is low, unemployment rates sound, the education system world class, and the city’s food culture is thriving. Entrepreneurship and innovation is present in a young, skilled and technically proficient business culture. And the city’s hardware generally manages to perform like a dream.”

    I think we’d all agree these are strong elements for any great city.

    Trying to define the characteristics of what makes a city a great place to live is an issue never far from the top of the agenda for civic authorities, urban planners, architects and developers.

    So what makes a city “liveable”?

    Over recent years there have been attempts to apply scientific criteria to the question of a “liveable city”. Designed with the original intention of helping multinational companies decide where to open offices or plants and how much to pay employees, through relative grades in areas such as stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, such lists attract much attention and discussion.

    The annual Quality of Living Survey from the consulting firm Mercer compares 221 cities based on 39 criteria. New York is given a baseline score of 100 and other cities are rated in comparison. Important criteria are safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability and public transport. The top of the list is dominated by Europe. It is not the only ranking list with a rather Anglo-Saxon perspective.

    In the annual list compiled by The Economist magazine, Canada, Australia and New Zealand top the list, with Vancouver at the number one spot. The Economist explains its criteria thus: “Cities that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. This often fosters a broad range of recreational availability without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure.”

    That sounds like Abu Dhabi.

    But Abu Dhabi is not close to the top of these league tables of liveable cities. I don’t want to dismiss the beautiful cities that consistently top the liveable lists of Forbes magazine, Mercer and The Economist – Vancouver, Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen and Munich. They are clean and peaceful and well designed – all great characteristics in a city. But they are rather monocultural; they lack the friction, the energy and the buzz that make some cities more exciting places to live.

    A more interesting best place to live list came from readers of the Financial Times, in May this year. Numbers two and three on the FT’s list were London and New York. No surprises there for their fans in the UAE: both have energy and excitement (and lots more besides) that many people look for in a place to live.

    But the city that came out top was Istanbul. Surprising? Not really. There is nothing boring about Istanbul. It is cosmopolitan, busy, young in its population but historic in its fabric, socially mixed, accessible and a city that has always built on its status as a bridge between not just continents but civilisations, ideas, religions and peoples. Istanbul is an exciting city. Could you have an enjoyable and exciting time there? Definitely. Live there? Possibly.

    And that is precisely the issue when it comes to liveability. Everyone’s criteria are different. After the mandatory issues such as safety, low crime, efficient infrastructure, far-sighted government and thriving economy, the rest is really up for grabs; a matter of personal choice.

    So what about Abu Dhabi? From the perspective of the liveability indexes, it has many advantages. It is able to learn from the examples of other cities and incorporate the best into its plans – in education, healthcare, leisure, enterprise and infrastructure. The development of Abu Dhabi is focused on developing community environments that meet the needs of one of the most diversely populated cities in the Middle East. Its position as a relatively new city makes it easier to initiate measures – from infrastructure to recycling – than in a more established metropolis.

    As the French philosopher Rene Descartes wrote when describing Amsterdam in the 17th century, a great city should be “an inventory of the possible”.

    There is no doubt residents in Abu Dhabi are on a journey towards fulfilling their own list of dreams and our ambitions of the possible.

    But the heart of a city cannot be located in buildings, plans and statistics. This lies in its people. Throughout the world the cities that are most alive, most “liveable” contain a mix of social and economic classes. When cities are doing things right, lots of people want to come to live in them, with a resulting buzz that comes from a diversity of population.

    These are characteristics at the heart of great cities. You won’t find them in a list. In these, Abu Dhabi is strong. And could be great.

    * Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak is the deputy chief executive of Aldar Properties.

    via Full: What makes Helsinki and Istanbul ‘liveable’? – The National.

  • Liveable, lovable – and lauded

    Liveable, lovable – and lauded

    By Edwin Heathcote

    Published: May 27 2011 17:46 | Last updated: May 27 2011 17:46

    Well, that touched a nerve. The idea of liveable cities, it seems, is one that provokes the pen and the keyboard. My critique of the blandness of the cities that always seem to top the “world’s most liveable” lists, which was published in the FT’s House & Home section on May 8, engendered a vigorous response and a sustained debate. The results of an FT.com poll were surprising and, I think, intriguing. The city that came out top in a readers’ survey was Istanbul. I was truly glad when I saw it – here’s a city that is the antithesis of the bourgeois monoculture I had railed against and that seems to confirm everything I had argued for. Istanbul is cosmopolitan, busy, young in its population but historic in its fabric, socially mixed with a huge disparity of income, accessible and a city that has always built on its status as a bridge between not just continents but civilisations, ideas, religions and peoples. 

    Istanbul, the city that topped the FT’s survey
    Istanbul, the city that topped the FT’s survey

    Cities two and three were more predictable: London and New York. I came in for a little stick over my bias to the old familiars – and I admit it is a slightly FT choice – yet both cities have consistently managed to reinvent themselves and, I think, deserve their slots. It is also worth noting, though, that both London and New York have recently had issues with immigration, both city administrations being at odds with their larger national governments in their liberal outlook. Increasing barriers to immigration will lead to the staunching of skilled (and, just as importantly, unskilled but entrepreneurial) workers, which can only be a good thing for the competition elsewhere. It is something that cities need to look at seriously if they want to stay at the top. Where are London and New York without immigrants?

    I should have seen number four coming. I left San Francisco out of my list – I felt one US city was probably enough – but I can’t argue with the choice. Its ethnic and social mix, culture, climate, landscape and tolerance make it one of the few cities that deserves its place. I also hadn’t included Paris, which came in at number five. I opted for Rome instead, for no real reason other than its particular chaotic charm which is the opposite of the French capital’s bourgeois chic. But with its rigid city wall of the périphérique, its immigrant communities living beyond a ring of concrete and traffic, I found Paris difficult to include on grounds of social mobility.

    Rio came next, followed by another of my omissions, Sydney – both cities embody a kind of sunny, laid-back, cosmopolitan lifestyle. Hong Kong at number nine sounds fair, though perhaps reveals another of those FT readership biases. Delhi at 10 was nothing to do with me.

    Just as controversial was the blacklist, the most unliveable cities. It always sounds a little superficial to compile a list like this – there are plenty of contenders – but I tried to use each city to demonstrate a particular problem. Plenty of readers wrote to attack my choice of Jerusalem but my point about the importance of tolerance stands; divided cities provoke international tensions. No one came to the defence of Dubai but Moscow and Birmingham had their advocates. Moscow, one reader wrote, was significantly safer to wander around at night than New York. Unless, of course, you’re a journalist. As for poor Birmingham, I almost felt bad about including it but I used it to illustrate a particularly English problem. As the country’s second city it should be a bustling, vibrant cultural centre (think of Hamburg, Guadalajara, St Petersburg, Cape Town, Los Angeles and … you get the idea). There should be a sense of competition, of vying for position. Instead England seems stuck in a London-centric fug in which the capital’s dominance is completely unchallenged – to the huge detriment of the rest of the country. There is no evidence of any serious government policy being formulated to address the issue of a post-industrial north.

    There were also, inevitably, those who were affronted by the omissions. Again and again, readers highlighted Barcelona. The city has done what Birmingham has been unable to do and has an extraordinary record in reinventing itself as a post-industrial destination, creating beaches out of wharves and conjuring seductive civic space from seemingly nothing. It is a city that has put its faith in thoughtful contemporary architecture and urbanism, that has protected its retail traditions and its historic core and emerged as a place anyone would happily spend a weekend, as well as a city for business. Quite an achievement.

    Melbourne and Montreal came up multiple times too, both solid contenders but perhaps veering back into traditional liveable cities mode. Budapest was also mentioned, a beautiful city where I’ve lived and loved but which remains too far from the vibrant, cosmopolitan heart of central Europe it was a century ago. Brussels, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Kyoto, Athens and many others made appearances and, judging from the mildly affronted views from Vancouver, perhaps I was a little harsh on the city in order to illustrate a point. Berlin, the city I struggled to omit, seemed sadly unrepresented and I thought Boston might have come up a little more.

    Ultimately, the criteria are different for everybody; lists can only ever be personal. We make and remake our cities in our minds. As Jonathan Raban wrote in Soft City: “Living in a city is an art … The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate in maps and statistics.” Or lists.