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What Makes A Great City?


alscotoz

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I loved Athens - amazing atmosphere to the place I thought! Hard to explain - felt like I was in a proper city!

 

Off to Moscow & St. Petersburg next year... looking forward to it.

 

Melbourne would be pretty close to my favourite city, in fairness... if I was 21 again, I'd probably live there. I love live sports and it's basically the sporting capital of the world. The lack of beaches is the major issue for me though. Minor issues with the unreliable summer and cold winters.

I lived in Moscow for close on 4 years. Great for tourists but not for working and living there. I see Calgary where I now live) came 5th equal with Adelaide as the best places to live. One thing the survey didn't cover was house prices which I suspect would have bumped the Canadian cities down in ratings.

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Paris is a stinking shithole full of Africans and expensive booze.

Fuck knows why dumb bitches think its some romantic getaway.

During the RWC in 07 I paid 20€ for a liter of krone bourgeois.

Didn't bother me I just wanted to drink a stein quickly

 

But aye, on my trip this year really noticed the poor quality \ relative high price of the std beers

Almost as bad as Denmark

Poor compared to nearby Belgium.

 

The food tho made up for it, but nae the waiters

 

Aside from that, brilliant place

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Embra is a great city. The fringe is a great thing, loads of tourists stoatin about lapping up the overwhelming joy of it all.

 

The council seem hell bent on destroying it, even unesco have said you better wise up or you'll lose your heritage status. You may have seen the plans for the new St. James centre, but the copper ribbon they're building to put on the top looks like a jobi. It even has the end crimped.

 

As Bill the butcher said, something along the lines of God taking a big shit and out comes Ireland. Well it looks like the council have achieved this dream, almost plumb centre in the capital.

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Re Montreal. In MoneySense's yearly rankings of Canada's best places to live, the finance website placed Montreal near the very bottom of the list. Out of the 417 Canadian cities, both small and large, included in the 2017 list, Montreal ranked an abysmal 356th.

 

I think you'd have to take that report with a very large dash of salt. And it also comes down to how you'd evaluate liveable.

 

It ranks Montreal 356, but has removed a number of portions of Montreal that would have bumped it up significantly in the rankings that are, to anyone who has spent significant time or lived there, part of what they call Montreal: Mont Royal, Westmount, Sainte-Marie, Saint-Lambert, Brossard, and several more. Would ranking Montreal with all its parts back in bump it up to top 10? Possibly not. But it would certainly rank higher.

 

And then you get to determining what's liveable. And I have a really difficult time believing, no matter the scale used, that Sept-Isles (#294) could be considered more liveable than (the somewhat reduced) Montreal in any respect (one of my nephews lives there). It's the most northern Quebec town you can get to by a paved road still, I believe. Not a lot of people live there, so presumably crime rates are lower than Montreal. And if you really, really like the outdoors, don't want visitors, and have no intentions of really travelling anywhere, i guess it's more liveable. Are there regular events, museums and galleries, walkable areas? Mmm... nope. That said, there's fabulous outdoor hiking, biking, skiing and water activities within a very very short distance of Montreal. Plus all the rest in Montreal.

 

That same survey also ranked Winnipeg as 45th best place to live. If you've been to Winnipeg, you'll know it's not the weather, the architecture, things to do, or the low crime rate that puts it there. So I'd not put much stock in that particular survey.

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I think you'd have to take that report with a very large dash of salt. And it also comes down to how you'd evaluate liveable.

 

It ranks Montreal 356, but has removed a number of portions of Montreal that would have bumped it up significantly in the rankings that are, to anyone who has spent significant time or lived there, part of what they call Montreal: Mont Royal, Westmount, Sainte-Marie, Saint-Lambert, Brossard, and several more. Would ranking Montreal with all its parts back in bump it up to top 10? Possibly not. But it would certainly rank higher.

 

And then you get to determining what's liveable. And I have a really difficult time believing, no matter the scale used, that Sept-Isles (#294) could be considered more liveable than (the somewhat reduced) Montreal in any respect (one of my nephews lives there). It's the most northern Quebec town you can get to by a paved road still, I believe. Not a lot of people live there, so presumably crime rates are lower than Montreal. And if you really, really like the outdoors, don't want visitors, and have no intentions of really travelling anywhere, i guess it's more liveable. Are there regular events, museums and galleries, walkable areas? Mmm... nope. That said, there's fabulous outdoor hiking, biking, skiing and water activities within a very very short distance of Montreal. Plus all the rest in Montreal.

 

That same survey also ranked Winnipeg as 45th best place to live. If you've been to Winnipeg, you'll know it's not the weather, the architecture, things to do, or the low crime rate that puts it there. So I'd not put much stock in that particular survey.

What's in Winnipeg?

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I think you'd have to take that report with a very large dash of salt. And it also comes down to how you'd evaluate liveable.

 

It ranks Montreal 356, but has removed a number of portions of Montreal that would have bumped it up significantly in the rankings that are, to anyone who has spent significant time or lived there, part of what they call Montreal: Mont Royal, Westmount, Sainte-Marie, Saint-Lambert, Brossard, and several more. Would ranking Montreal with all its parts back in bump it up to top 10? Possibly not. But it would certainly rank higher.

 

And then you get to determining what's liveable. And I have a really difficult time believing, no matter the scale used, that Sept-Isles (#294) could be considered more liveable than (the somewhat reduced) Montreal in any respect (one of my nephews lives there). It's the most northern Quebec town you can get to by a paved road still, I believe. Not a lot of people live there, so presumably crime rates are lower than Montreal. And if you really, really like the outdoors, don't want visitors, and have no intentions of really travelling anywhere, i guess it's more liveable. Are there regular events, museums and galleries, walkable areas? Mmm... nope. That said, there's fabulous outdoor hiking, biking, skiing and water activities within a very very short distance of Montreal. Plus all the rest in Montreal.

 

That same survey also ranked Winnipeg as 45th best place to live. If you've been to Winnipeg, you'll know it's not the weather, the architecture, things to do, or the low crime rate that puts it there. So I'd not put much stock in that particular survey.

I have to say I don't think Montreal deserves to be rated so lowly either, I think there are some pretty dire examples worse than Montreal. I was in Winnipeg last weekend and it doesn't seem too bad a place but I haven't spent long there to give much of an opinion. Thunder Bay on the other hand is just depressing.

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Aberdeen isn't shite, it's just not a big City, Also it's not Dundee or Glasgow...WIN

 

Edinburgh is great, the Festival is exactly what you make it, amazing fun and great party atmosphere and culture, or a pain in the arse while you try to work/live your normal life

 

Paris is full of cunts.....I still like it though, maybe I fit in

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Aberdeen isn't shite, it's just not a big City, Also it's not Dundee or Glasgow...WIN

 

Edinburgh is great, the Festival is exactly what you make it, amazing fun and great party atmosphere and culture, or a pain in the arse while you try to work/live your normal life

 

Paris is full of cunts.....I still like it though, maybe I fit in

Spent. Friday and Saturday night through at the festival. Don't think I have ever seen it so busy. It's an expensive outing though, not looking forward to checking the bank balance with still nearly a fortnight till pay day!

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We went to see Choir of Men in the Assembly Rooms. Was pretty good to be honest.

Also went to the 22.30 showing of the Tattoo. Was quite the spectacle.

We went to see Blueswater presenting a history of the blues up at surgeons hall. Was a good hour of live music. Was at the tattoo a week or so ago for the late showing. Stunning. Thought the French band doing Daft Punk was a nice surprise.

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I think what makes a great city, to me anyway, is a combination of the history, the culture and the general "feel" of the place.

 

Excellent summary.

 

If a place has layers and layers of history - like Rome, or Trier - you can really feel that stature.

 

Budapest is another cracking place deep in history. Originally celtic, then roman, its been ransacked by mongols (the asiatic warrior tribe, not sevco fans), conquered by muslims, fought over by the Nazis and Soviets and was the epicentre of two hungarian revolutions. Just wow.

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