Uploaded on 2017-04-01 by Joeri Bijster

1) Although I am aware that I present a very West-European top 5 which is in line with some of the global indeces and rankings, I feel this is a honest list, as I have also visited cities in other parts of the world (Accra in Ghana, Doha in Qatar, New Delhi and Bangalore in India, Marrakech in Maroc). I have added the city of Groningen where I was born, which is relatively small, quite unknown, but very liveable in my opinion. 1. Stockholm, 2. Copenhagen, 3. Zurich, 4. Geneva, 5. Groningen 2) These five characteristics are essential to make a city liveable (I have clustered some of the attributes) 1.Facilities (Education, Health Care, Culture, etc) 2.(Public) Transportation & Infrastructure 3.Socio-Cultural Conditions & Tolerance 4.Natural Environment & Access to Nature (Recreation) 5.Quality of Housing, Architecture & Urban Design 3) The City of The Hague (The Netherlands) has good facilities. It houses 9 hospitals, plenty of schools and universities and a number of theatres, museums and cultural attractions. A way to improve this in the future, could be to increase the connectivity with nearby cities such as Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam, that have already started to open up dependances of their universities (as an example) in The Hague. Public Transportion within the city is good, with electrical trams, busses and a subway (metro). The city also has 6 train stations. Public transport could be improved by transforming the bus network into a more green network: from combustible fuel to electricity (like the trams). Also, the western part of the city is less connected to the rest of the city and territory, because The Hague is in a 'corner position' of the national network of infrastructure. As a result, there is no ring road for cars, and there are no train stations in the western and southern parts of the city. The beach - which is also in the west - is a big attraction, but this currently leads to traffic jams, especially in the summer days. The socio-cultural conditions and tolerance are poor. There is a worth mentioning segregation between rich (white / high-educated) neighborhoods and poor (immigrant) neighborhoods, with dominance of Islam. Although it is not considered to be a real problem, politicians often classify certain neigborhoods as deprived areas where police officers are not trusted by the citizens. This situation should be transformed in order to create a more resilient socio-cultural balanced city which is more tolerant. The proximity of beach and dune areas offer many opportunities for recreation. Although this is already a big asset for the city, the access to these areas should be improved as describe above. The quality of architecture and urban design is strikingly better in some place than in other places. In the future this could lead to deterioration of certain areas which undermines the sustainability of those parts of the city. The flow of money should be more equally divided over the city, in order to improve this aspect.