HONG KONG, PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES — For me, there is no question that Hong Kong is one of the world's most wondrously livable cities. After 30 years of having Hong Kong as my home, I would challenge anyone to claim that — on balance — any other city can deliver the same combination of virtues.
So you can imagine the sense of perplexity when three quite separate organizations recently published "livable city" indexes that left Hong Kong bumbling along in the deep penumbra of "also ran" cities.
This synchronized triple assault came to my notice first in the idiosyncratic U.K. style magazine Monocle, which ranked Munich, Copenhagen and six other European cities in their Top 10 livable cities and let in Tokyo and Melbourne. Whether Europe's cities look as smug in five years — after the deep government spending cuts being implemented to fend off bankruptcy — can only be guessed.