![]() ![]() With their often lovely facades, ample parks and good infrastructure, they constitute, for the most part, a list of what Wharton's Joe Gyourko calls "productive resorts," a sort of business-oriented version of an Aspen or Vail in Colorado or Palm Beach, Fla. These places make ideal locales for groups like traveling corporate executives, academics and researchers targeted by such surveys. In fact, most of the cities are in countries with low birthrates-Switzerland's median fertility rate, for example, is about 1.4, one of the lowest on the planet and a full 50% below that of the U.S. Most of these regions suffer only a limited underclass and support a relatively small population of children. Cultural institutions, public safety, mass transit, "green" policies and other measures of what is called "livability" were weighted heavily, so results skewed heavily toward compact cities in fairly prosperous regions. To understand these rather head-scratching results, one must look at the criteria these surveys used. But regarding American urban boosters, that's all, folks. 11 on the Monocle list and broke into the top 30 on Mercer's, as did No. The best we can say is most American cities did better than Harare, Zimbabwe, which ran at the bottom. The Economist rankings largely snubbed American cities-only Pittsburgh made it anywhere near the top, at No. Only Monocle put a truly cosmopolitan world city-Tokyo-near the top of its list. ![]()
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