Best cities to live in (world-wide)... according to Mercer

''Europe’s cities once more dominate the world’s top 10 for quality of living. Vienna is the city rated with the best quality of living worldwide, moving up one place in the rankings following improvements in Austria’s political and social environment.
...
In the city infrastructure index, German cities fair particularly well with Munich (2) the highest ranked in the region, followed by Düsseldorf (6) and Frankfurt in joint eighth place with London.'' [source]

And Copenhagen is 11th in the table for "The world's top cities offering the best quality of life" and 3rd as "The world's top cities offering the best infrastructure".

These data are interesting and could help (for example in Europe) to find out more about our neighbor countries... it is very complex to compare for example the life-style and quality of life of Luxemburg and Spain. But the validity of these tables heavily depend upon the parameters used to classify cities...

"Mercer evaluates local living conditions in all the 420 cities it surveys worldwide. Living conditions are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:

* Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement, etc)
* Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services, etc)
* Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom, etc)
* Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc)
* Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools, etc)
* Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion, etc)
* Recreation (restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports and leisure, etc)
* Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc)
* Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services, etc)
* Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)"

I wonder how many of these factors are measurable in an accurate way, and how one can avoid the biases if for example some of these factors are self-declared by each nation...