Munich has 7th best quality of life worldwide

World-wide quality of living survey - Mercer HR

Although apparently the generic cities of switzerland do bland that little bit better...

(only kidding, Munch is alright!)

Still totally confused as to how Düsseldorf and Frankfurt rank higher than Munich

I think the polls are biased in terms of ease of business and the like so that does it for them...

Down from 5th since last year.

TT topic: Munich has 5th best quality of life - HR Mercer survey 2005

This is utterly wrong. I have never lived in a town with crappier weather than Munich. My 1 1/3 years in Munich have been spend almost entirely in either rain or snow. Surely good weather counts for something?

As Billy Connolly said "There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes".

It wasn't long ago that Norway was ranked the best country in which to live. Upon hearing this some renowned Norwegian politician remarked that clearly the judges had never been to Norway (true story - looking for a link).

These ranking almost always have to do with social spending; countries with high taxes which in turn spend lots of money on social programs rank higher. Period.

Give me a place with warm weather, taxes under 30% of my annual salary and a 4% unemployment rate any day.

Frankfurt better than Munich? Would anybody here rather live there?

You obviously have never been to Bielefeld, I lived there for 8 years - it is Germany´s second wettest town next to Münster (also in Westfalia).

Hmm... I wouldn't call Switzerland very generous when it comes to social spending.

but Auckland is higher than Sydney and Wellington than Melbourne

Here's a vote for Frankfurt!!!

Roll on Mainhattan...

New Zealand, Australia - all the same place really isn't it

Depends what you count as good weather. I think snow is good weather and it doesn't rain that much compared to most of the UK.

I'm from Brisbane where it never rains and is hot all the time and when people ask me what is better about Munich compared to Brisbane the number one thing is definitely the weather...

It's wetter here than most of the UK and much wetter than the South-East of England. See here for annual weather charts. Of all the UK cities in the list only Glasgow is significantly wetter than Munich.

dont be jealous now

I`ll have to agree with MajorBummer: weather sucks! (if you've always lived in a sunny country, that's right).
But it's true that some people wait the whole year to have snow and go skiing. So, for that people, München must be a dream!
Anyhow, i think München is a really nice place to live in-better than Frankfurt.

what really? I grew up near Edinburgh and we had either weak sunshine or one of many differentiated kinds of wet misery. Like the Inuit have hundreds of words for snow, the Scots likewise have the same for precipitation. As for the temperature - there are only two seasons in Scotland, winter and June. As far as I can make out the climate here is far nicer. when it snows it snows properly and leaves the city crisp and white and when the sun shines the sky is a beautiful blue. Yes it rains, but I can forgive it that. why can't the rest of you?

This is true, it's funny that a lot of Germans think it rains all the time in Britain and look at me in disbelief when I tell them that Munich gets twice as much rainfall as London in the summer. Here's some graphs courtesy of the BBC BBC Average Weather Conditions
This is London This is Munich

The major difference I think is it tends to hammer down with rain here for short time whereas in Britain it can rain for a week! On the whole I think the weather is better here.

this is probably the key. Four days of torrential downpour in Munich is worth three months of smirr in Glasgow. probably why it never seems to stop raining there but here we have many many rainless days.

Anyone who is not convinced of the quality of life in Munich does not spend enough time in the mountains. I guess FFM and Ddf rank higher based mostly on the employment side.
I have been to both Ddf and Ffm, spent considerable time in Ffm, but anybody who even suggests that Ffm can offer a quality of life anywhere near that of Munich seriously needs their head looked at. I do find the the natives are nicer in Hessen that Bayern. Bavarians are apparantly a Gewohnheitssache, but after 4 years here I just think the locals are generally not as open and friendly as one might find in other German states.

A couple of Germans told me the BBC charts must be biased! They point-blank refused to believe that London is drier than Munich. Not that it really matters, q. of life is higher here, weather included.

we don't want no f'ing' seppos in australia

DW speaks the truth though. The lifestyle componet of these rankings is very lightly weighted. It's biased more towards social and financial benefits to citizens

As someone has already pointed out, it seems to really drizzle a lot in the UK unlike here where, although still getting drizzle, we often get really hard down pours, especially in Summer.

For example, here is the graph for Brisbane Australia, which has drought conditions most of the time.



Compared again to London:



This is showing Brisbane getting loads more rain than London. I can tell you that almost all of this rain that falls in Brisbane falls very hard and very quick because people are always praying for more rain there.

Try living in Melbourne where the weather is totally unpredictable and the wooden houses just can't cope with the 42 degrees it creeps up to a couple of times a year (most don't have aircon). Eight months of winter and rain drags on and on and after nearly three years there I personally found it a lot more expensive to live in than Munich - It has one of the highest tax rates in the world and don't get me started about their neurosis with health and safety laws... Munich so far seems to me like a much better place to be and a lot more central thats for sure - none of this 24 hr flight to get to civilisation... What the hell it snows more here than Melbourne

Melbourne = Four seasons in one day

Munich = One season for most of the bl*&dy year. I reckon those ratings could change for Munich after this winter...

You've obviously never spent any time living in Wellington NZ

@Dangermouse
No I haven't. What's so bad about the weather there? I personally think the Munich weather is controlled by the CSU Stoiber government in an attempt to chase the foreigners away. I must say, they are succeeding.

Windy Wellington - they say the pilots that land there are amongst the best (and probably craziest) in the world.

I still have nightmares from a flight I took from Wellington to Christchurch in 120km winds. Never again.

I'm from Cape Town. Very windy as well. I am also amazed by their ability to still land safely despite the strong south-east blowing. I think I'll give Wellington a rain check.

I think that's a good idea, I just found this:


From here

Well Germany only got one spot on the top 50 list for resturaunts in the world not that I have eaten at any of the 49 places. Food

Some interesting rankings can be found on www.citymayors.com...
Check it out

This year Vienna comes top, with last years winner Zurich coming second.
Munich has moved up to 7th.
Munich comes second (after Singapore) in the infrastructure charts.

More at www.mercer.com.

intersting to read, and see which countries seem to be doing well, even though the financial news always seems doom and gloom.

The german speaking countries on top! Is that pure coincidence?
And the british colonies with near-complete white and christian immigrants too. Also a coincidence?

P.S. Frankfurt ranks higher than Munich? The ugliest big city in Southern Germany?

that's probably due to having a better red light district, can't think of anything else

Düsseldorf, Munich and Frankfurt offer expatriates the highest quality of living in Germany, according to a new study.

International human resources consultancy Mercer conducted the comparison of 215 global cities, ranking the German cities sixth, seventh and eighth on its overall list.

European cities dominated the top 10, with Vienna coming out on top as the place with the best quality of living worldwide for those on international assignments. It surpassed this year’s number two Zürich, following what the Mercer report describes as “improvements in Austria’s political and social environment.”

Geneva, Switzerland came in at number three, followed by Vancouver, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand, which both tied for 4th place.

203 words remaining. Click to read the full article.

Would people really rather be in Frankfurt or Zurich when they could be in Berlin or Paris? I can only suppose this survey weighted things like 'clean streets' above any measures of cultural vitality or a decent nightlife. Feels more like a survey of 'where European bankers want to live.'

Clear pseudoscience.
These lists are just compiled without proper approach. For example, Düsseldorf wins partially because of the airport, but somebody "forgot" that it lies in Westfalen, where a short ride on a train can take you to the same airport from a number of cities.
If I remember correctly, one of the criteria in the rank was the "number of seats on public transport vehicles", which is simply ridiculous: a city with poor public transport (more old vehicles) will get the same points as a city with faster, ergo fewer, buses. After all, the better city does have a fewer seats, right?
I'm not going to bore you with a scientific paper here, but these ranks are just worth jack.

I was in Vienna last week and sent out 2 postcards but after I arrived back home this week, I was told that the postcards never reached!! Now what is this 'best' infrastructure of mails services are they talking about!!

My experience with Mercer is that they have a bad habit of doing that.

W00ot, my hometown is tied fourth with a place called "Vancouver, Canada". What is a Canada?

Not coincidence, just the result of ruthless Germanic efficiency.


Beauty doesn't factor into the calculations, which is why Toronto also gets a look-in. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than live in Frankfurt, but if you are measuring healthcare, schooling, public transport, etc. then Frankfurt clearly has a lot to offer.

hahaha as a Melburnian I do have to confirm all this...here I am amazed when we get 2 weeks of uninterrupted nice weather..where (generally) you can plan your day based on the weather forecast..

Also I like the fact that Munich has a highly-functioning public transport system that you can rely on, unlike Melbourne (and pretty much all of Australia) where if you live more than 10km from the city centre you *need* a car...Where my parents' house is...it's a 25-30min drive into the city...if you tried with public transport it's like a 60-75 min effort. F*ck that!

Maybe the survey included the areas around Frankfurt. Some of them are really nice and green and still close enough to the city centre to get to work easily.

This video explains the 2009 results of the survey: Quality of Living - Insights to our 2009 results

As I mentioned above, the number of trees is NOT a factor in determining quality of life in this survey. I agree that for many people it is a very important consideration, but the Mercer survey takes a very statistical, emotionally-detached view on the subject. That's why you have to take it with a pinch of salt – not least since it only considers large cities, which for many people automatically means lower quality of life than a smaller town.

Air quality is a factor. That's slightly related to the number of trees I would say.