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Noisy, edgy London or dull, calm Zurich - it's no contest
Johann Hari, Evening Standard10 Jun 2008
Pack your bags! Sell your house! It's time to leave behind sleepy, dull old London and head for the wild adrenaline-rush of ... Copenhagen. Or Vancouver. Or Zzzzzzzurich. Yes, another one of those "studies" to discover the best city in the world has come up with these excruciating museum-cities and left us off the list.
Who draws up these charts - 90-year-old Valium addicts? I have been to five of the top 10 cities in this new list. The experience was invariably like being in a coma, with Rowan Williams talking incessantly at your bedside. When I arrived in Munich, I thought it was closed. When I visited my relatives in Zurich, I found the city riveted by a debate about parking offences; it had been going on for six years. I have been to Helsinki, Stockholm and Minneapolis - and I cannot remember a single thing about them.
The only vaguely interesting city on the list is Paris - and even she has become the Disneyland of Love, selling a parody of herself for a tossed-aside euro.
These lists pose as impartial assessments of "quality of life" but they involve value judgments most of us don't share. They assume we would choose serenity over excitement. Monocle magazine chose Copenhagen as the best city because life there is, it said, "frictionless" - but it is friction that causes sparks. Those of us who choose to live in this big dirty stretch of concrete on the Thames knowingly sacrifice peace for something we value more: the thrill of knowing we are at the centre of the world.
With nothing more than an Oyster card, you can tour little Beijing and miniature Bangladesh and small Krakow. You can see the tower block that broadcasts Zimbabwe's only opposition radio station, or a Bollywood movie where you eat poppadoms not popcorn, or hear one of the greatest orchestras on earth. Flick through a London listings magazine and you will find more entertainment on one night in London - more gigs and shows and movies and readings and lectures and club nights - than you could absorb in a decade in Scandinavia.
Isn't all this worth living in a shoebox in Hoxton and cramming sweatily onto the District line for? Doesn't the shouting on the street and the howling in the night remind you that you are alive?
Of course there are aspects of Copenhagen we should copy. The city is more pedestrianised than any other in the West: imagine if we turned Oxford Street from an eternal traffic jam to a brisk pollution-free stroll. And Copenhagen doesn't have our staggering extremes of inequality, because Denmark taxes and spends and redistributes more.
But even with these boons, Copenhagen remains a lush, plush cul-de-sac. I would rather live on the crossroads: it is worth the noise and crush and sweat to see the world go by. Here in London, we value the fastened beating of our hearts over the punctual emptying of our bins.
Reader views (2)
I agree with much of what Johann says but when he praises Copenhagen and Denmark for high taxation he misses an important point about the negative impact of high taxation on the vibrancy and diversity of a city. With the right of freedom to work anywhere in the EU, skilled young Danish workers have fled (mostly to London and Germany)...indeed London is referred to as the Capital of Young Denmark simply because of this. One of the reasons that Copenhagen is quieter and less edgy is that there are fewer young people with disposable income. And young people on low incomes still pay enormous taxes. Unlike some of the other Baltic states which have embraced low or flat tax tax...which itself is a redistribution - from the dead hand of the state into the pockets of those who earn it.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK, 11/06/2008 09:49
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Great article - I lived in London for 4 years and I had a fantastic time. Sure "liveable" cities like Copenhagen and Zurich will always look better on a paper put together by egg head academics but let's face it you can live in a city but that is not the same thing as being "alive". London is 8 million and growing fast - the Copenhagens and Zurichs of this world struggle to keep the people they have. Only the old and boring tend to remain in those places. Give me good old London any day!
- Jeff Bronstein, Hobart, Australia, 11/06/2008 02:15
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