What cities have a high quality of life?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm nitpicking but it bugs me that Montreal is frequently described in such a manner. Montreal isn't a particularly old city, nor does it have much (admittedly subjective) gorgeous architecture. It's the incessant Francization (?) of Montreal/Quebec, turning it into some fiction of baguettes and chateaus.

Montreal was much smaller than, say, Cleveland or Buffalo. Is Cleveland frequently referenced as some historical gem? Montreal, outside the core, looks very typically Canadian, with lots of postwar commieblocks and the like. It doesn't have anything like a French feel, or even a Philly feel, for that matter. It's very North American, just with a differing dominant language. The really nice areas look like Brookline, not Versailles.

Montreal definitely isn't Paris but it doesn't look like your typical Canadian city either - if such a thing even exists. And it certainly doesn't have "lots of commieblocks".

Here is what it looks like a 15-minute drive or hour walk from the oldest part of town in the heart of the city:

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5255...8192?entry=ttu

If it's to be compared to any American city, one might call it a much much better preserved St. Louis. And even then...

(It's really got its own look and feel.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Yuri

What about Edmonton? I follow some urban and transit channels on YouTube and they usually say nice things about it.

Edmonton has a decent economy and is even more affordable than Calgary but it's a notch or two below Calgary in terms of urban finesse. It's got more social problems and the downtown and central areas aren't as well-kept, dense and vibrant.

Calgary is also a bit milder in the winter and gets what are called chinook winds which melt the snow and can bring the temperature up above +10C, giving you occasional spring-like days. You don't really get that in Edmonton where the cold is more persistent.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by mousquet

T'as pas compris. I didn't say all safe neighborhoods had a synagogue.
I said all neighborhoods with a synagogue were safe.
Can you get the difference in wording?

As for the rest of your rant, it is yours only, and uninteresting.

Rant?!?! Writing definitely might be a problem as people might completely miss the tune. I just casually responded your post because it reminded me of an experience of mine abroad and it took it so badly as I was insulting you or something. And I was saying I liked your city, that I felt safe and comfortable in most of places there... Good Lord.

Originally Posted by mousquet

Oh, and you claim to love Tokyo... It is probably the least ethnically or religiously diverse megapolis on Earth.
The Japanese don't want to face the human challenges that we have to cope.
Or at least, they've been reluctant to challenge themselves so far.

I said nothing about liking or disliking ethnic diversity. I like both the homogenous Tokyo and the over 50% foreign London.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by Yuri

What about Edmonton? I follow some urban and transit channels on YouTube and they usually say nice things about it.

Surely you know better than to believe everything you see on Youtube?

The 2 cities are just 300km apart but they might as well be on the opposite side of the planet. Calgary is robust, youthful, safe, clean, with a vibrant downtown and a lot of very walkable areas stocked with great shopping, tons of restaurants, and cafes with high population density. Great parks, hyper clean, wealthy, fantastic transit for it's size, close to the Rockies, the winter Chinooks, massive cycling infrastructure, all with none of the arrogant attitude you get in Vancouver.

Edmonton is very boring, an ugly downtown that is as dead as a doorknob after 5PM...it's not called Deadmonton and/or Ed-mono-tone for nothing. It has a very high crime rate, huge social issues, not a single block of a complete street in the entire downtown, and the architecture is ugly and the streets are dirty. Yes, it has an exceptional River Valley, one nice neighbourhood over the river near UoA, a decent transit system, and does have some great festivals, but overall it a thoroughly dislikeable place which is why it is the butt of jokes across the country.

Old joke.............why did Edmonton build it's original airport so close to downtown?............because if there was a plane crash it wouldn't kill anybody.
Old joke.............First prize, a week in Edmonton, second prize, 2 weeks in Edmonton, 3rd prize, 3 weeks in Edmonton.
Classic quote from ex-Calgary Mayor.........................."Edmonton is not the edge of the planet but you can see it from there"

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Surely you know better than to believe everything you see on Youtube?

The 2 cities are just 300km apart but they might as well be on the opposite side of the planet. Calgary is robust, youthful, safe, clean, with a vibrant downtown and a lot of very walkable areas stocked with great shopping, tons of restaurants, and cafes with high population density. Great parks, hyper clean, wealthy, fantastic transit for it's size, close to the Rockies, the winter Chinooks, massive cycling infrastructure, all with none of the arrogant attitude you get in Vancouver.

Edmonton is very boring, an ugly downtown that is as dead as a doorknob after 5PM...it's not called Deadmonton and/or Ed-mono-tone for nothing. It has a very high crime rate, huge social issues, not a single block of a complete street in the entire downtown, and the architecture is ugly and the streets are dirty. Yes, it has an exceptional River Valley, one nice neighbourhood over the river near UoA, a decent transit system, and does have some great festivals, but overall it a thoroughly dislikeable place which is why it is the butt of jokes across the country.

Old joke.............why did Edmonton build it's original airport so close to downtown?............because if there was a plane crash it wouldn't kill anybody.
Old joke.............First prize, a week in Edmonton, second prize, 2 weeks in Edmonton, 3rd prize, 3 weeks in Edmonton.
Classic quote from ex-Calgary Mayor.........................."Edmonton is not the edge of the planet but you can see it from there"

That's so harsh!

Anyway, here the video I mentioned it:

• Video Link

As it's one of those pro-urbanism, pro-density channels, I took their word for it.

Anyway, it seems by what you and Acajack saying, Calgary is doing right nice, but I am (or have become) a very big city guy.

[Zeej]

Edmonton appears to have made strides in recent years. It's pro growth and pro densification. It has a lot of land to work with and there's a lot of intensification that needs to take place, but the administration appears to have embraced this approach, aiming to double the city proper's population without expanding its footprint.

I actually know Oh The Urbanity! personally - they come by their opinions honestly, taking the time to visit places. People are welcome to disagree with them but their stuff is well researched.

[jbermingham123]

If I had to make a US analogy, Calgary and Edmonton are like Denver and Omaha, respectively.

Calagry, like Denver, is fundamentally a plains city, but set at the foot of the mountains. The mountains are a (maybe the) fundamental part of both cities' identity. As for the chinook winds, they are caused by adiabatic compression as air is forced through the mountains, so both Calgary and Denver experience them, as well as Great Falls, MT, where I grew up.

Edmonton, on the other hand, is just a flatland city, through and through. Its not really a plains city the way that, say, saskatoon is; its more of a woodlands city like Minneapolis. It is quite far from the mountains; far enough that you cant see them from anywhere in the city, and far enough that the chinook winds cant reach. I think it has a lot of potential to be a more northern, western Minneapolis. It will need to develop some sort of identity in the coming decade or two if it wants to survive the transition away from oil.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by citywatch

Almost any city is appealing or attractive if ppl are wealthy enough. For some cities listed, 'quality of life' does not come immediately to mind.

this person owns a large, deluxe penthouse in manhattan...

• Video Link

But her so called quality of life....around 1:06....takes on a different angle.

• Video Link

Spent $13 Million USD ($17.6M for Canucks) for the ultimate NYC Central Park dream, but is happiest in a "luxury" double wide beside the Pacific coast of California that cost her 16x less money.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Montreal definitely isn't Paris but it doesn't look like your typical Canadian city either - if such a thing even exists. And it certainly doesn't have "lots of commieblocks".

Here is what it looks like a 15-minute drive or hour walk from the oldest part of town in the heart of the city:

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5255...8192?entry=ttu

If it's to be compared to any American city, one might call it a much much better preserved St. Louis. And even then...

(It's really got its own look and feel.)

What many Canadians think of as Montréal housing typology. Classic 3 storey walk-up.

4846 De La Roche St
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6p8ZgGFK5Zkd2KzW6

What many Canadians understand to be a "Commieblock", in classic white concrete (this case covered in brick veneer) southern Ontario form

(Towering Heights Blvd, St. Catharines, Ontario)

Crawford, what are you talking about?
Maybe you have to do a summer visit to Montréal!
I recall you being overall impressed on your Toronto visit 2-3? years ago. Montréal should impress you more, imho

[Acajack]

I mean, Montreal does have some commieblocks...

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4954...8192?entry=ttu

But you often need to look for them, whereas they're a very obvious feature of cities in Ontario and on the Canadian Prairies.

They're also fairly rare in Atlantic Canada.

Whereas Vancouver, though a major high-rise apartment city, does things a bit differently and isn't really a commieblock city and metro either.

[PhilliesPhan]

In the US, only 5-6 cities meet my definition:

-Philadelphia
-New York City
-Boston
-DC
-Chicago
-San Francisco

Internationally, the bar is much higher:

-London
-Amsterdam
-Berlin
-Tokyo
-Shanghai
-Singapore
-Buenos Aires
-Rio de Janeiro
-New York City
-Melbourne

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Toronto doesn't have high rents. Unless things changed recently, all the big Canadian cities have cheaper rents than the big American cities.

Canada has a housing ownership crisis, not a rental crisis, mostly due to bank/govt. manipulations and immigrant cultural affinity for ownership.

5-10 years ago you might have been correct, but rents have soared (often by double-digit year-over-year percentage points) across the country with very little vacancy, thanks to our insane level of population growth coupled with the unaffordable RE market. There's absolutely a rental crisis - it's one of the biggest domestic issues at the moment.

Average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Toronto is over $2,500/month, with a 1.4% vacancy rate. Still lower than say, NY or SF - but incomes are also much lower and there are fewer affordable alternatives.

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm nitpicking but it bugs me that Montreal is frequently described in such a manner. Montreal isn't a particularly old city, nor does it have much (admittedly subjective) gorgeous architecture. It's the incessant Francization (?) of Montreal/Quebec, turning it into some fiction of baguettes and chateaus.

Montreal was much smaller than, say, Cleveland or Buffalo. Is Cleveland frequently referenced as some historical gem? Montreal, outside the core, looks very typically Canadian, with lots of postwar commieblocks and the like. It doesn't have anything like a French feel, or even a Philly feel, for that matter. It's very North American, just with a differing dominant language. The really nice areas look like Brookline, not Versailles.

I also think Montreal's "historicness" or foreignness is sometimes overstated, but minimizing it as being little more than a French-speaking Cleveland or something is an overcorrection too far in the other direction.

It's still a first-wave, 17th century North American city that's contemporaneous with the likes of New York, Boston, and Philly after all. That it was slightly smaller than Cleveland in 1940* or whatever has no bearing on either the quality of its traditional urban form, nor the extent to which it was preserved - let alone how it may have been improved upon or expanded since. I mean, Cleveland doesn't look like this:


https://stock.adobe.com/it/images/pa...city/383177676


Judging cities as some sort of zero-sum exercise based strictly on their population in 1940 is a weird take in 2024.

*On closer inspection, that's probably not even true - while historic data is questionable, it looks like (metropolitan) Cleveland was at no point larger than (metropolitan) Montreal, nor was Buffalo.

[Nouvellecosse]

As a person who has visited Montreal many times, it is indeed beautiful and historic. And that is no more because of some imagined "European-ness" than it is with any other North American city described as beautiful and/or historic. North America's historic architecture is heavily influenced by Europe in general.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

(It's really got its own look and feel.)

Yeah Montreal is the only city I'm aware of with the raised main level connected by a steel staircase. And the fresh scent of bagels and hockey.

[ssiguy]

There are many very desirable cities in the world but we are talking quality of life and how can a city have a high quality of life when the majority of people can't afford to live there?

Personally, I think cities with a high quality of life are those that offer that quality without having to have a Platinum American Express card to get in. A truly vibrant and livable city is one where people of all socio-economic situations can partake. If, after paying your rent/mortgage you are living cheque to cheque with almost no disposable income, what kind of "quality" of life are you truly experiencing?

[Kngkyle]

Looking only at cities I've actually been to -

Sydney
Sevilla
Lisbon
Amsterdam

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Tokyo is the cleanest gigantic city that I have visited. It is the cleanest city of more than 20 million. It is the cleanest city of more than 10 million. It is the cleanest city of more than 5 million. Heck, it might be the cleanest city of more than 2 million. Way cleaner than Calgary, for example.

Paris and New York are awesome cities, but they are not clean cities.

I envy Tokyo. I don't know of any large U.S. cities that I would call clean. E.g., as popular as Austin is, and with one of the best downtowns in the country, it's probably the least clean city I've seen with population of about 1M or more in this country. Part of the issue is homeless camps all over the city, and the garbage that come with them. It's one of the big reasons I moved away.

[SIGSEGV]

Boston is probably the cleanest major American city, though it's not clean compared to Japan or Northern Europe...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JManc

Yeah Montreal is the only city I'm aware of with the raised main level connected by a steel staircase. And the fresh scent of bagels and hockey.

Yeah, the outdoor staircases are unique, especially the spiral ones. Known in French as escaliers en colimaçon (literally snail staircases). Colimaçon is an old French word for escargot.

I know the historical reason for them (to avoid paying taxes that only applied to the square footage of completely indoor spaces) but it's still a surprising part of the architectural vernacular, given our climate.

[WhipperSnapper]

Edmonton continually gets ignored which is to its benefits. Affordabiliy is rapidly eroding in Calgary from unsustainable interprovincial population growth from clusterfucks like Vancouver and Toronto. Housing costs are way up from a couple years ago. It's an employers market with more people looking than available jobs. Wages are declining.