Our cities are our own – we make them inside us

Liveable v lovable by Edwin Heathcote. An excellent article on the issues attendant to creating subjective lists and in particular exploring the conundrum that magazines that put together lists of the best cities in which to live, usually end up with cities which don't particularly attract many people to live in them. Logically, to answer the question of which cities are those best to live in, one would look at the cities where people choose to live and one would have Mexico City, Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, etc. Instead you have Vancouver, Geneva, Vienna, etc. Wonderful cities each but on what basis can it be said that they are the best place to live if the majority of people are choosing to live in such cities as Hong Kong, Cairo and Chicago.

The answer is not dissimilar to the challenge of those book lists where reading enthusiasts try to identify the best books of all time.

Heathcote's comment regarding judging cities might equally apply to books:

Of course, the ultimate difficulty with these surveys is that tastes are individual. I find London infuriating but –with the possible exception of New York – couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live. “The city is a unique and private reality,” wrote Jonathan Raban, author of Soft City. He proposed that his London was a “soft city”, a place that everyone remakes in their own manner, in which every place evokes a personal memory or connection and which we navigate through our own unique mental maps. Our cities are our own – we make them inside us. No city means the same to two people so how on earth can we measure them?