Uploaded on 2017-05-09 by Cristina Martín-Sonseca Ponz

STEP 1 1. Copenhagen. People that have experienced living here say wonders about this city. Living in Denmark involves having free education and health services, together with multiple benefits and assistance in most of your daily activities. The quality of those services is quite good as well. As an example, university students get government’s economical help while they are studying so they are self-sufficient. 2. Odense. This is a much smaller city than any of the others in the list but I have a big experience with it because I was living there for two and a half years and I will go back to live there after the summer, after having lived in Vienna for 6 months (I will explain my experience there in the fourth point of this step). In this city the salaries are high, even if the prices are high as well. In comparison, having just an average salary you can live kind of luxuriously (it is cheaper than Copenhagen) I find that something important was how easy it is for a person to register in the city and go through the administrative procedures. When I moved to Odense, it was extremely simple to go through the registration process. However, it is really hard to find affordable accommodation; this is probably the main disadvantage of this city. It is full of green areas and parks, has some leisure activities and the transportation inside the city is good (mostly because of the biking culture). Outside the city, the transportation can be either by train or car until you reach one of the surrounding airports (one or two hours away). 3. Helsinki. They say Helsinki (together with most cities in Finland) have really high liveability standards. This is probably due to the quality of health and education, together with high salaries and close to no worries due to the great amount of government assistance. I recently watched a documentary in which they said that students only had 20 hours of classes a week and nearly no homework and that seemed to be the key to one of the best education systems in the world (they had to recently change it because their system turned out to be in a really bad position some years before). 4. Vienna. I am currently living here and I believe it is one of the best places to live due to economical and social aspects. I will go more into depth in the last step of the exercise. 5. Madrid. I was born here, so this might affect my judgment. However, I think that the weather, together with the leisure and green areas make Madrid a great city to live in. A lot of cultural activities can be combined with great food and people that like to socialize (something I have not found in any of the cities I have lived in) make it a great place to live in. STEP 2 1. Average salary in comparison of price and quality of living. What I mean by this is that a high average salary is not good enough if the city is extremely expensive. However a high average salary, combined with the availability of jobs reaches the top of my list. Sadly, the reasons why I would move and stay into a city are mostly economical but it is also important that the education and health are free and a good quality; together with other aids such as unemployment and social services. 2. Availability of leisure activities This could be connected to the fifth item of my list because some leisure activities could be going to parks, beach, hiking in the mountains or practicing any of the multiple sports available in those areas. Besides this, cultural activities such as museums, theatres, operas, cinemas, etc. are truly important when increasing the happiness of the citizens. Socializing spaces, restaurants, shopping malls and so on are also important, together with nightlife, music, and concerts. Other establishments such as gyms, welfare centres, etc. also create an optimal environment for recreation. 3. Location and weather I personally need a city to be moderately warm and dry to feel comfortable. If mountains partly surround it, the wind tends to be moderate and the same happens to the temperature in areas close to the sea. Neither too cold nor too hot areas are good for the liveability of a city, even though in the video it specifically said cold areas are better. I agree that cold is better than heat but, in my opinion, a simply warm temperature is the best option. The location is also important when it comes to the daily hours of light in an area. In northern areas, they have half of the year with only a couple of hours of daylight while the other half barely has darkness during the nights. 4. Ease of transport In the globalized world we live in, it is important to be easily connected to different areas of the same city, to other cities and to other countries as well. Cities with good quality public transportation, relatively cheap airports, a grid of railways, etc. are more appealing. 5. Accessibility of green and natural areas This is partly connected to the location in the natural areas. If there are mountains, beach, valleys, etc. in the surroundings. However, parks, fountains, or areas in which outdoor activities can be performed, make a city more attractive. STEP 3. Vienna 1. The average salary is quite good and the quality of living is not too expensive in comparison. However, I believe it could still be better with a system closer to the Danish. 2. There is a broad range of leisure possibilities from cinemas and shopping centres, to extreme sports and welfare centres. 3. In terms of weather I personally prefer warmer cities and winters in Vienna are rough, while summers are too hot. The location is adequate, as happens with most of old cities like this one. This happens because they were established when the means and technologies did not allow to modify the terrain. It is located next to the Danube river, on plains but not far from mountains. 4. Public transportation is great (even though it is a little expensive in my opinion). Multiple options and wide range are provided. 5. Green and natural areas are very common and accessible in Vienna and its surroundings. In this aspect, I find it almost perfect (it would just miss the beach in my ownpersonal opinion). As I arrived relatively recently to the city, I am not entirely sure about how some aspects of it are working, such as energy or water distribution for instance. However, I know that they normally do not recycle much in most of the places, and steps in that direction would probably make it more liveable. I feel the city is really polluted and I thus think that the vehicle traffic should be reduced and the factories moved further from the city. This, together with a greater number of green facades and roofs, should help reduce the carbon footprint of the area. Architecturally, buildings in general can be made more sustainable, with systems that reduce the energy usage (for example, intelligent lighting that with sensors it dims the artificial lights when there is enough daylight) or create energy (for instance with solar cells or biomass), reuse grey water or incorporate vegetation in the exterior. It is still allowed to smoke in public areas and in some bars and restaurants. This is something quite important for me when it comes to the liveability of a city. I find it really uncomfortable when someone smokes next to me and I would truly prefer a city in which smoking is banned, even though it would not be one of the factors that would prevent me from moving into an urban system.