Kerre Woodham: How would you rate the "liveability" of New Zealand's cities?

What makes a city liveable? The Economist Intelligence Unit, which is such a grand name, has released its latest list of the most liveable cities. There are 173. Three Australian cities are in the top 10 – Melbourne third, Sydney fourth, and Adelaide eighth. For all the bad press Melbourne gets for its crime, it's doing pretty jolly well to be there in the top three. Auckland came in at 12th place, down five – one of the biggest downward movers, along with the Gulf state cities. We all know why they lost their lustre, but we haven't got a war to blame that on, have we? Wellington is out of the top 20.  

How are they scored? Well, they're scored out of 100 across 30 quantitative and qualitative factors, categorised into five core metrics: stability, that's worth 25% that's the prevalence of crime, the threat of terror, and military and civil conflict. So of course, poor old Damascus, that kind of skews it for Damascus and Iran, places like that. 

Healthcare counts for 20% the availability and quality of private and public healthcare. Culture and environment is 25%, but it's much more than how many theatres there are, it's climate, corruption levels, social and religious restrictions, access to food, drink, and sport. Education is 10%, the quality and availability of both public and private education, and infrastructure is 20%, the quality of public transport, roads, energy and water provision, telecommunications, and housing.  

Now, the Economist Intelligence Unit doesn't just draw up its annual list to provoke debate and to get jingoistic city dwellers to go, “No, my city's better, no, mine is." Assessing liveability, they say, helps benchmark perceptions of development levels, as well as helping companies assign hardship allowances as part of expat relocation packages. If you're being transferred to Damascus, you can use this as evidence of applying for a hefty hardship allowance. Being transferred to Copenhagen, which came first, knocking Vienna off the top of the list, be hard to argue that's going to be a hardship. 

How would you rank the liveability of New Zealand cities? If you've lived in a couple of New Zealand cities, two or three or four, I'd love to hear how you would rank them. Christchurch surely would have to rank highly given the rebuild, given the availability of housing, given healthcare there, given the opening of the new stadium. And there's also that intangible qualitative factor, which is the vibe of a city rebuilding. Wellington, I could have easily made a case for the best city in New Zealand a few years ago, but that really needs to get its groove back. Back in the day with the public spaces that were available, the beautiful City Square, and the library, and the Pyrmont Bridge, and the vibrancy of the nightlife, and the coolness of the arts and culture scene, combined with the fact that it was a city that was easy to get around... I would argue the climate, I enjoyed the climate. For a long time I was able to quote the fact that the Basin Reserve was able to play more days of test cricket than Eden Park. Eden Park lost more days to rain than the Basin Reserve did. That was a stat I kept up my sleeve when I was living in Wellington. But boy, that has plummeted off, and I would put the blame fairly and squarely on the successive mayors in Wellington. I think I'd go back as far as Fran Wilde and Ian McKinnon as the deputy. Since then, it's just been a bloody nightmare for Wellingtonians.  

Auckland. I mean, it's a big sprawling city. It's a series of interconnected villages rather than really one big city, but it's starting to get its groove back. I noticed that yesterday when I was in downtown Auckland and I saw some gorgeous young people, well-dressed, striding down the street. The shops looked great, there weren't as many empty ones, there were the public spaces that weren't filled with people who looked like they needed professional help in making their way through the day. You know, it just looked like it was starting to get back to being a real city again.  

Hamilton's going to have to do something about Victoria Street before you could call that a world class liveable city. But when it comes to what makes a desirable city, the Economist has its criteria: stability, prevalence of crime, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. When it comes to the cities around New Zealand, how would you rate them? I'd probably put Christchurch first, then Auckland, maybe Tauranga although it's got its issues, I'm looking at the schools as well, Timaru, Hamilton, and Wellington's got some work to do.