Recent study made by Mercer Human Resource Consulting announced the top cities in the world according to their presumed quality of life. Given the predominant western materialistic and measurable concepts about the notion "quality of life", the cities listed within the top 50 are not surprisingly representing only the most developed countries from North America, Western Europe, and the Western Pacific Rim. We have plenty of surveys, which show us that the West is best because it's West. In this case however some of the factors under consideration are not purely materialistic. Even considering the quality of life as a more complex phenomenon, the result remains the same, the so-called most developed industrialized countries and their urban centers in general offer the best possible urban quality of life.

The changes from the previous years in the ranking list are visible but not so significant as to change the whole picture. One of the main conclusions after browsing the data is that outside the sphere of western co-prosperity whole regions still can't find the right formula for catching-up with the most developed states. In Eastern Europe and Latin America the top cities Prague and Buenos Aires share only the 79th position. According to the survey they need putting more efforts on the health and the sanitation issues. For the same reasons the Russian pearl Moscow scores on 190th position despite the efforts to turn it to a certain degree into some modern version of the "Potemkin's village"*.

The quality of life is partly determined by materialistic factors such as consumer goods' availability, banking services or quality housing, no doubt very important elements for consideration by the business expatriates, to which such kind of surveys are intended. However partly this survey is based on non-purely materialistic and even on openly non-materialistic values, which shortage the only the economic underdevelopment of one country or another can't explain. Some of them are independent of the good will of the local authorities such as the natural hazards (e.g. earthquakes in California or Japan). Some of them as law and order are largely a reflection of domestic factors. Some others like the censorship or the limitation of the personal freedoms are entirely dependent on the government will. Nobody can blame Tokyo or L.A. for the quakes. On the other hand, the high criminality is partly a social and partly political problem. Political decisions on the citizen's dressing code or censuring the public opinion both fall within the governmental domain.

While acknowledging that such surveys are a step in the right direction of enlarging the notion of quality of life beyond its purely materialistic limits, we still wish to see even more elements included, making it even more complex and flexible. Perhaps it will be useful to look into the minds of the ordinary persons and measure the level of their stress and also to measure the level of social self-organization in dealing with extraordinary events. With all the rest being equal, the quality of life in a city with smiling people, polite drivers and non-stressed (and non-stressing) coworkers will be much greater than if all these elements are missing.

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* - In the late 18th century Russian Prince Potemkin had the idea to build false villages in the newly acquired Russian territories in order to convince the Western travelers that these villages had already been populated by Russians.

Quality of life 2004 Top 10:

• Zurich (Switzerland)
• Geneva (Switzerland)
• Vancouver (Canada)
• Vienna (Austria)
• Auckland (New Zealand)
• Bern (Switzerland)
• Copenhagen (Denmark)
• Frankfurt (Germany)
• Sydney (Australia)
• Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
• Munich (Germany)

(Source: Mercer Human Resource Consulting)