I wrote earlier about the World’s Happiest Places, and how I think cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Malmo are key. Well Forbes have now released a new survey on the top 10 World’s Happiest Cities. So what are they and why are they?
Top 10. World’s Happiest Cities
Here’s the list from Forbes:
- Rio de Janeiro
- Sydney
- Barcelona
- Amsterdam
- Melbourne
- Madrid
- San Francisco
- Rome
- Paris
- Buenos Aires
I’ll leave you to agree or disagree with the findings. The question for me is:
Why are these cities happy?
Amazingly the author of the survey, Simon Anholt, states people like Melbourne and Sydney simply because of an association with Australia and Crocodile Dundee. They’re in Australia so the cities must be fun. Is this really all it takes?
Simon says the survey is subjective, so shouldn’t be taken too literally. In fact it is more about branding as it is people’s perception of the cities that influence the results. People think Rio is fun and sunny, they think the people must be happy and they then want to go there.
Perhaps the lesson to learn here is not what makes cities happy, but how cities can brand themselves as happy to attract people?
