Beyond the Rankings: What Makes a City Truly Liveable

 

Before my day had even begun, I received a message from a friend. Attached to it was a Prothom Alo photo card proclaiming: “Three of the World’s Ten Most Liveable Cities Are in Australia.” My friend congratulated me.

Congratulations have become remarkably easy to obtain these days. You can receive them without having done anything at all. I have played no part in making Australian cities liveable. Yet simply because I flew here from elsewhere and settled in one of these cities, my friend apparently considers the achievement worthy of congratulation.

I do not blame him. After all, many people have arrived from elsewhere, taken possession of things and claimed the credit. In his own city, he has watched people seize the achievements of others and become enormously powerful almost overnight.

It is true that I came to this foreign land from elsewhere, but I am nowhere near being someone who simply arrived and took over.

Almost 40 per cent of this country’s citizens were born overseas. Each of them left their country of birth and is now trying to make this country the homeland of the next generation. Most of them have had little direct involvement in making Australian cities “liveable” according to the criteria established by a few commercial organisations.

How, then, have Australian cities remained near the top of global liveability rankings year after year?

Consider Melbourne. When a global ranking of liveable cities was first published in 2002, Melbourne placed third. It retained that position for approximately eight more years. In 2011, Melbourne rose to the top of the list. For the next seven consecutive years, from 2011 to 2017, Melbourne was recognised as the most liveable city in the world. In 2018 and 2019, Melbourne was ranked the world’s second most liveable city.

Then COVID arrived. Melbourne became the largest prison in the pandemic-stricken world. For months, the people of the city remained confined to their homes. Yet even during that period, the rankings continued. At a time when the entire planet had become unsafe and seemingly unliveable, lists of the world’s most liveable cities were still being published, somewhat absurdly.

Melbourne ranked twenty-fourth in 2020, eighth in 2021 and tenth in 2022. It returned to third place in 2023, ranked fourth in both 2024 and 2025, and rose to third place again in 2026.

Apart from advertisements produced by local tourism offices and reports in sections of the news media, these rankings carry little significance at either the local or national level. Most residents of these cities do not appear particularly concerned about them.

Nevertheless, a question remains. Do the people responsible for governing these cities take any special measures to move their cities higher in the rankings or to keep them there?

There is, in fact, little opportunity to take separate or immediate action for this purpose. The areas on which cities are supposedly assessed cannot be transformed overnight. Education, healthcare, public transport and civic amenities are fundamental components of long-term social and administrative systems.

It is therefore natural that cities in countries where these public services have struggled for many years will remain near the bottom of such rankings.

Another essential factor is respect for social justice and institutional ethics. These cannot be acquired in a hurry. They are established through a century or more of ethical conduct and good governance. In a society from which integrity and principled speech have been banished, it is only natural that the pursuit of justice will often produce more noise than actual justice.

Let us return to Melbourne. For seven consecutive years, Melbourne was ranked the most liveable city in the world. The city’s mayor might therefore have claimed credit for making Melbourne the world’s most liveable city. Recent history would appear to support such a claim.

Robert Doyle was elected Lord Mayor of Melbourne in 2008. He was subsequently re-elected for further terms, partly because of his achievements and the public recognition of his work. He remained Lord Mayor until 2018. During his tenure, Melbourne was recognised as the world’s most liveable city for seven consecutive years.

However, he could not use this achievement as a shield to conceal allegations of unethical behaviour.

No, he was not accused of theft or financial corruption. Nevertheless, in February 2018, before the completion of his term, he was forced to resign following allegations that he had inappropriately touched a female employee in his office.

The institutions governing Melbourne showed no special mercy to their celebrated mayor.

This respect for justice, the legal system and institutional accountability—and this intolerance of unethical conduct—is one of the greatest strengths of this country.

But why is there so much lamentation in cities placed near the bottom of the rankings?

I believe that this lamentation is itself a form of commercial weapon. In practical terms, such rankings have little relevance to the lives of most people in the world. Yet ever since rankings of this kind were introduced, people have consumed them enthusiastically. This has become particularly noticeable since social media began to develop into a means of earning money.

The country in which our roots lie, the city in which we grew up, and the place that holds all the joyful and painful memories of our childhood, adolescence and youth—would we abandon it simply because it appears near the bottom of a ranking?

If my country is my mother, then my city is at least my sister and my shelter. Can someone who belongs to us be ranked? Can a mother’s affection be ranked?

They say that Dhaka is the third least liveable city in the world. What difference does that make to the people who live there? Will they all abandon Dhaka and rush towards one of the cities near the top of the list?

Residency or citizenship in wealthy countries and cities such as those associated with Denmark, Vienna, Melbourne or Sydney can often be obtained by people with sufficient money. Many wealthy residents of Dhaka regularly fly to such places and settle there. It would be untrue to say that they never experience—or display—a sense of pride in living in those cities.

Chottogram, a City of Bangladesh

Yet how can they forget the supposedly unliveable city in which their relatives, friends and loved and unloved acquaintances still live? How can they forget the city where they once sat in a rickshaw, marched in a procession or walked through the rain? How can they forget its light and shadows, and the love that belongs to that city?