Creative Class

Some topics, like some years, seem never to go out of fashion. So with the ranking of cities. This is in part due to the almost endless ways in which the pie can be sliced and the endless interest in the different types of fruit. Surveys throw up different results. In one of the newer slices, Tyler Brule ranks the most livable cities in the world in the FT. The index is based on Monocle’s “world’s most livable cities.”

Zurich, Switzerland wins as the most livable city in the world followed by Copenhagen and Tokyo. But Copenhagen is the most interesting result. I have spent some time in Copenhagen recently and have been curious about several things. The Danes are the happiest people in the world, are the most entrepreneurial, and now have one of the most livable cities. Curious. I wonder what the Baltic states have that the rest of us do not? Is it the homogeneous culture, is it the low level of stress? In the sixties the Danes decided not to teach children how to read because it was too stressful. College students get a stipend to go to school. And the city, well it is also a very livable place with almost everyone on bicycles, including women with babies in the winter.