Y a vueltas también con las listas de ciudades

También hace unos días retomábamos el tema de las listas de ciudades. El Financial Times, a través de Tyler Brulé (el prescriptor de lo cool por excelencia), publica A league table of liveable cities. Se trata de la clasificación que lanza Monocle, dirigida por el propio Brulé.

Richard Florida recoge algunos extractos en el blog de Creative Class:

1. Copenhagen: out in front by virtue of its scale, a good airport, all those bike paths and handsome locals.
2. Munich: almost a winner, but it should have committed to building the Transrapid airport rail link.
3. Tokyo: the world's best big city by far. Unfortunately, last week's stabbing spree hasn't done much for its public safety record.
4. Zurich: more relaxed neighbours would put it in first place.
5. Helsinki: a European capital with a foot firmly in Asia.
6. Vienna: one of Europe's greenest cities.
7. Stockholm: the city wants to go vertical -- a tricky mission.
8. Vancouver: the best of North America in a beautiful frame.
9. Melbourne: the best neighbourhoods in the southern hemisphere.
10. Paris: its visionary mayor has made the old dame internationally relevant again.

11. Sydney
12. Honolulu
13. Madrid
14. Berlin
15. Barcelona
16. Montreal
17. Fukuoka
18. Amsterdam
19. Minneapolis
20. Kyoto + 21. Hamburg, 22. Singapore, 23. Geneva, 24. Lisbon, 25. Portland.

Finally, these may not tick all the normal boxes but there's something truly refreshing and more than a little fun about urban living in: 1. Genoa -- the next Barcelona? 2. Buenos Aires -- it's all there and then it's not. 3. Istanbul -- all of the ingredients to move into the top 25 next year. 4. Beirut -- if chequebook diplomacy Qatar-style put a temporary lid on things, then Beirut deserves more of it for a proper bounce-back. 5. Phnom Penh -- regime issues aside, love moves at a perfect pace. ...

Brule, never one to mince words, has some candid, and in my view useful and needed advice for London (where he lives), Toronto (his hometown) and NYC.

What is still something of a shock is how many cities still get it so very, very wrong. London doesn't make the grade for the simple reason that it has somehow managed to grant planning permission to a most uninspired shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush, an area that is rapidly becoming a part of central London.

Toronto doesn't qualify because it has allowed its suburbs to become unconnected, ugly sprawls of hideous houses (garages bolted on to the front of houses are far better suited to southern California than to southern Ontario) and has done little of merit to deal with its derelict railway lands. New York continues to grind to a halt under the weight of automobile traffic, has no coherent scheme to get more people on to bicycles and still no sign of a high-speed, non-stop rail link to any of its airports.

Personalmente, desconfío mucho de este tipo de rankings, basados en un paradigma hurbano bastante discutible, que se basa en valores posmodernos y ciertamente excluyentes, con una visión de la modernidad muy particular. El propio R. Florida, en la web del libro Who´s your city recoge unos mapas interesantes basados en este tipo de concepciones en algunos casos.

Aquí un video de autobombo de la revista sobre el proceso de elaboración del ranking: