Every year the The Economist Intelligence Unit publishes its Global Liveability Ranking. It’s a list of 140 cities supposedly assessed for their “stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”, but having done our own assessment we can confirm that there’s one metric which ranks above all else.
And the reason we decided to look into it? Because Melbourne – the city which has topped the ranking for seven smash years – has just been beaten by Vienna.
Yes, the city in Austria. No, not the delicious ice cream confection.
Obviously we wanted to know how Melbourne could possibly have been knocked from the top. But after a quick look at the rankings we think that we know what they mean by “liveability”.
It means “trams.”
Melbourne, as you know, is super trammy. Vienna is similarly tramladen. Osaka, city number three, boasts a tramway and automated trams, offering next-level Japanese tram diversity .
Canada’s proud city of Calgary, who are at #4, phased out its streetcars decades ago… and replaced them with light rail, aka the most modern of trams – just like the #5 city, Sydney, is attempting to build so very, very badly at the moment.
Trams, people. TRAMS!
Look, we’re not sure what’s going on here either.
So Melbourne has two choices. Either invest in even more trams – one to the airport might be a bit goddamn useful – or alternatively send a crack team of vandals to Vienna to give their trams a healthy going over.
And if it’s option 2… look, we know some guys…