Time Out's inaugural City Index reveals the world's most fun cities
Here at Time Out, we love the cities we call home. So naturally, we wanted to work out what makes each of them so much fun
We collaborated with Tapestry Research to survey 20,000 people across 18 different Time Out cities. We asked them all about urban life, from where and how they go out, to food & drink, work, friendship, romance and more. The results? A fascinating look at how we make the most of our cities around the world – and a brand new ranking of which places are thrilling their residents the most in 2016. We assessed all the answers, based on the following six factors:• Dynamism – how vibrant and exciting life there feels.• Inspiration – whether the city feels like a pleasant or difficult place to live.• Food & Drink – if the city is somewhere you can eat well (and not too expensively!).• Community – whether local neighbourhoods were rated highly.• Sociability – and whether the city felt welcoming or isolating.• Affordability – whether people could generally get by OK.So what makes a city a wonderful place to live? Plenty of great places to eat and drink? Friendly locals? A feeling that there is always something new and exciting to explore?
The great news is, Melburnians feel like they’ve got all of these things going on at the moment. Of the 18 cities we surveyed, Melbourne came in second, only beaten by Time Out’s new capital of good times, Chicago.Read more about Melbourne’s results.
But the bad news is, Sydneysiders don’t think they’ve got many of those things going on right now… they’re drunk, horny and miserable. Sydney voted itself into 16th place, inching out only Kuala Lumpur and Dubai for the wooden spoon. Read more about Sydney’s results.