Monday 15 February 2010

The Best Cities in the World


Do you like the city you live in? Do you think that it is the best place in the world? A magazine called The Economist conducted a survey early in 2010 to find out the top ten most liveable cities in the world. The first one on the list was Vancouver and it was followed by Vienna and then Melbourne. The magazine said that people who lived in Vancouver were happy with what the city had to offer. It had the best healthcare, education and infrastructure. It also had very good streets, trains, buses, parks and many other things.
Four cities from Australia made the list. These cities were Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.
Some people are not happy about the survey and say it is wrong. They say that Vancouver is the most unaffordable city to live in. It is followed by Melbourne and Sydney. They say that it is strange for cities that are too expensive for most people to live in to be the most liveable ones.
One woman said that Australia’s health system ranked 23rd in the world according to the World Health Organization in the year 2000 and that makes it hard to believe that four cities made the top ten on the list.
The magazine also mentioned the bottom ten cities to live in. They included Harare, Dhaka, Algiers, Port Moresby, Lagos, Karachi, Douala, Kathmandu, Colombo, and Dakar. Most of these cities are in Africa in third-world countries that can't afford to have good hospitals or schools. These countries have a lot of corruption too and many people there die from AIDS and other serious illnesses.