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The following study is an attempt to objectively explore the truism:

“Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there” 

The operational version of this truism would be that tourist cities and livable cities are different cities. The truism has been named the Visit/Live Theory for the purposes of this study.  Two lists that rank cities were compared.  The first list ranks cities according the number of tourists that arrived in a city.

The list and a description of the list can be found at:

http://www.euromonitor.com/Top_150_City_Destinations_London_Leads_the_Way

The second list ranks cities according to livability.   Mercer Human Resources looked at 39 quality of life issues including political stability, currency-exchange regulations, political and media censorship, school quality, housing and the environment.

The Mercer list and a description of the list can be found at:

http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/livable_cities_worldwide/

Table 1 shows all the cities on both lists in alphabetical order.  In addition, the difference in rank was calculated for each city when this was possible.  If a city was on only one top 100 list then the difference in rank could not be calculated.  The tourist destination study looked at 150 cities, but for the purposes of comparison, only the top 100 tourist destinations were used in this study. Many cities were only on one list and not on the other list.  The number of cities on both lists was counted.  The number of cities only on one list was also counted.  If the number of cities on both lists was greater than the number of cities not on both lists then this would suggest the truism is not true.

NR, no rank, no top 100 rank in this category

N/A, not applicable since the city was on only one of the lists

Table 2 below shows cities that were on both lists ordered from the least difference between ranks to the greatest difference between ranks.

Conclusion

There were a total of 155 cities on either list.  112 cities were only on one list.  Only 43 cities were on both lists.  Cities that are only on one list outnumber cities on both lists 2.6:1.  Even for cities on both lists, the mean difference between ranks was 37.6 and quite high.  These findings suggest that cities that are visited are not the same cities that are more livable.  The truism that some cities are nice places to visit and different cities are nice places to live in is correct.   Table 2 showed which cities had the least difference between ranks and the greatest difference between ranks.

The city with the least difference in rank was Lisbon.  Lisbon had a rank of 47 on both lists.  Toronto had the second least difference in rank and has the honor of having a relatively high visitor rank (14) and livability rank (15).  Amsterdam showed a similar pattern to Toronto with a visitor rank of 18 and a livability rank of 13.

Geneva had the greatest difference in rank.  Geneva is a great place to live (2) but doesn’t get very many tourists (98) relative to other cities.  Shanghai had the second greatest difference in rank but in the opposite direction as Geneva.  Shanghai is a city that many tourists visit (13) but only ranks 100 in terms of livability.  A practical implication for expats is to be wary of deciding to live in cities you like to visit without taking the Visit/Live Theory into account.

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