liveable cities

Back in 2002 Melbourne and Vancouver tied for top place in The Economist's 'World's Most Liveable City'  survey. Then in 2005 Vancouver pipped Melbourne to take first spot (Melbourne fell to a still respectable second but there was still a lot of teeth-nashing to be heard in Victoria).

The travel section of Melbourne newspaper the Age (and the SMH) a fortnight ago featured a story entitled, 'Vanbourne or Melcouver? Which is more liveable?' (and featured the gorgeous image reproduced to the left). The feature conceded the superiority of Vancouver overall (though the writer was a guest of the Canadian Tourism Commission, Air Canada and the luxurious Wedgewood Hotel so he could hardly say otherwise). While mostly singing Vancouver's praises (and why not--it looks and sounds a great place), the key critical moment in which parochialism couldn't be repressed was a comment on the proliferation of Starbucks' cafes in the city. They are here to some degree in Melbourne, but usually they are pleasingly empty.

There is something interesting in the way that the title of the piece suggests the notion of the two cities as twins; as belonging to a new global subset of particularly kind of cities (the 'livable' rather than the 'first' or?). Also, while the title poses the question of rivalry it also hints that each city's identity is bound up in the other through the hybridization of names.Or is it alluding to that rhetoric of homogeneity in the wake of globalization?