Official Top Ten Cities - Way to go Sydney!

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From: premreviews.blogspot.com

Honestly, there is no surprise there. Sydney IS beautiful, even if it would also make it into the Top Ten Most Expensive cities to live. Compounding Sydney's successful placement is not the only gorgeous Australian city to make it into the top thirty-five cities either.

There are four others, making Australia a truly wonderful place to raise your children - as I did, in Melbourne.

Melbourne has stayed at seventeenth, as Perth has done, Adelaide improved by one, to hit twentieth and Brisbane came in at thirty-fourth place. I've been to three out of four, with a wish that one day, I'll manage to see Perth with my husband.

When my children were young, my family and I once took a road trip from Melbourne, traveling north to Alice Springs. My eldest son and I climbed what was then known as Ayer's Rock (now Uluru, since aboriginals won their right to claim it back,) and lay exhausted at the top, breathing heavily, with a little laughter at our struggle and the greatest sense of achievement that I've ever felt in my life. It was that good.

Australian cities usually make it into the top thirty-five list, but it's not often that four have made it there in the same year.

The factors which are considered when rating a city for inclusion are:

established infrastructure;

transport facilities;

quality housing close to the city;

a wide selection of restaurants and other amenities;

good education and environment.

The annual survey is used by international companies and governments as they set pay rates for expat., workers. That and a salary survey (in part,) also reveals exactly what it takes to attract working people from overseas.

In addition to these criteria, Australia also has one of the best standards of living in the world. Therefore it's no wonder that Australia has many Americans in their upper management sector who have requested transfer to one Australian city or another.

The Top Ten Cities global survey relies on data that's been collected over a period of three months to November the previous year, with last minute monitoring conducted to confirm results.

The quality of life factors that are considered are:

political and economic stability;

human rights and personal freedoms;

pollution;

crime rates;

health standards;

cost of consumer staples;

access to education, housing and entertainment;

public transport and traffic congestion;

climate and record of natural disasters.

Zurich came in at number one again with Vienna and Geneva in a tie at second place. The city with the lowest quality of living and the lowest levels of safety, was Baghdad, a country that can now only be described as war-torn, exceedingly dangerous and terribly sad.

With all these factors that are taken into consideration, I'd rather the Olympic committee used the same criteria to choose their host city - it would be far more appropriate and would certainly have cut Beijing out with it's ignorance of human rights as their major issue.

Two American cities also made it into the top thirty five - Honolulu and San Francisco. The latter I've been to and had many wonderful times there with friends but Honolulu, I keep thinking one day ....

Interesting Links:

About.com
Top 10 Free Sydney Attractions
by Larry Rivera

About.com
World's Best Concert Halls - Top 10 Concert Halls
By Aaron Green

Travel Industry Insider
Top 10 Things to do in Sydney, Australia
by Erin JulianTrip Advisor

Sydney, Australia Overview
by Erin JulianTrip Advisor

Vibe Hotels
Top Ten Tourist Attractions

Sources:

The Australian
Sydney cracks top ten cities

Image Sources:

Matthew Field
Wikimedia Commons

Fajitian2
Public Domain

Rob and Jules
Creative Commons

More information together with excellent photos of Sydney

NowPublic