Top Ten Cities

Aileen's Favourite City

As a baby boomer, I have given up buying newspapers; they are ridiculously expensive compared to an annual online subscription. It's no surprise, as recent research has found baby boomers to be the most frugal generation, having grown up during rationing and the waste-nothing years of the 1950s. We are also less likely, according to research using data from the UK Biobank, to suffer type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and have fewer anxieties because of sugar rationing during our early years. This may explain why we challenged authority and rebelled against conventions in the 1960s, changing tastes in music, fashion, and moral codes. Who would have thought that the Swinging Sixties resulted from taking less sugar!

I now read the paper in bed when I wake up without having to go to the shop. The downside is that online newspapers are very formulaic, and they tend to post articles about the top ten of everything, from best mince pies to Donna Summer's best record; it's Hot Stuff. Presumably, it is cheaper to get some influencer to provide a personal top ten and allow the online newspapers to bulk up without any journalism. 

Nevertheless, I must have been affected by this populist trend, and when I was in Stockholm, I asked myself: would Stockholm make one of the top ten cities I have visited? It had some of the qualifications: a capital city, fine buildings and public realm, museums,  a significant history, an excellent public transport system and was very walkable with pedestrianised streets, EV vehicles and lots of green spaces, and it was built on an archipelago of islands that led to the Baltic. 

I made a long list of 20 cities and then began paring them down to my top ten. Ranking them is a different matter; it would take forever with so many factors to weigh up, so they are listed alphabetically. I have made solo trips to Istanbul and Stockholm in the past eighteen months and have selected both of them. The others, apart from Sydney and Kuala Lumpur, were all with Aileen. She had a more discerning taste than I and, if asked to rank them, would have said Venice every time.

Hong Kong          Waterfront location, density of development, diversity

Istanbul               Seaboard location. Size, mosques, ferries, energy

Kuala Lumpur    Food, Architecture, Multicultural, Green Space

Paris                     History, Planning, the Seine River, Walkability, Cafes, Art and Museums 

Rome                    Ancient History, Buildings, Food, Walkability, Vibes

San Francisco      The Bay, Hills, Green Space, Architecture, Laid-back, Food

Stockholm           Archipelago, Buildings, Culture, Green Space, Public Transport, Friendliness

Sydney                 Harbour, Bridge, Laid-back, Outdoor Living, Beaches

Vienna                  History, Culture, Art, Cafes, Public Transport

Venice                  Car-free, Canals, Walkability, Architecture, St. Mark's Square

And the ones that just failed to make the cut were:

Berlin, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Krakow, Madrid, New York, Seville, Vancouver            

Saying Farewell to Venice, 2019