Do you like living in your city?

I was born and grew in the country side and will probably end my life in the country side. But like many people I'm in this phase of my life where I'm in the city. "Going to live in the city" for me meant moving to Montréal, and I'm glad because I can't think of any other north American city I'd want to live in for a long time. I visited some other places too, I can't say Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto or any of the other Canadian cities had a lasting impact on me. I could see myself maybe living in Boston or New York. I liked LA and San Francisco but I can't see myself living in a place like that long term.
 
No-one's done Sydney, New South Wales yet?

The basics

Sydney is a world city, about 4.5 million people, extremely diverse, and a magnet for people all over the world so it attracts pretty much anything you might want to see, eat, or do. It's also so sprawly and low density that by geographical area it covers about the same space as Sao Paolo or Tokyo.

Pros

-Food. This has to be one of the best cities on the planet for eating, you can find pretty much anything.

-Culture/events/etc. Again, huge city = everything comes here.

-It's actually quite beautiful. Not just the obvious harbour and rivers and beaches, but also the rest is mostly quite leafy and green.

Cons

-Politics. Terrible, wasteful, corrupt, venal politicians have pissed away huge amounts of money and mismanaged all the infrastructure, especially health and transport. The city is run by thuggish developers. The cops are mostly corrupt.

-Too sprawly. Because it's so low density, it's too big, I know people who spend 4 hours travelling each day to get to work or university. This also means the best bits of the city are concentrated in small areas and the rest is mostly suburb.

-Liquor laws and nightlife. The laws are biased towards huge violent superpubs, with very few decent small pubs or suburban pubs around. So then when there is drunken violence from this overconcentration of drinkers, everyone is surprised and the laws get changed to be MORE restrictive rather than less.
 
Pros

-Food. This has to be one of the best cities on the planet for eating, you can find pretty much anything.

-Culture/events/etc. Again, huge city = everything comes here.

-It's actually quite beautiful. Not just the obvious harbour and rivers and beaches, but also the rest is mostly quite leafy and green.

Cons
-Too sprawly. Because it's so low density, it's too big, I know people who spend 4 hours travelling each day to get to work or university. This also means the best bits of the city are concentrated in small areas and the rest is mostly suburb.

Melbourne has you beat on four counts. We have better food, better events, better looking (on average), and we are more sprawly.
In terms of sprawliness, we have a larger area and half a million less people.
 
Montreal, QC

Haven't lived in any other city long enough to give a fair comparison of any kind. My only gripes stem from the temperature extremes that the city experiences during the year.

i.e.: ±30°C winter (windchill) & summer (humid) days.
 
Montreal, QC

Haven't lived in any other city long enough to give a fair comparison of any kind. My only gripes stem from the temperature extremes that the city experiences during the year.

i.e.: ±30°C winter (windchill) & summer (humid) days.

I think the hot humid crap is a lot worse than the biting cold. On the hot humid front, we're far from being alone, hehe.
 
I like living in Elk River, MN. Not too far from my parents' place in Princeton, but doesn't consume as much time driving down to the (twin) cities.
 
Melbourne has you beat on four counts. We have better food, better events, better looking (on average), and we are more sprawly.
In terms of sprawliness, we have a larger area and half a million less people.

Why would Melbourne have better food or events than Sydney? They're mostly pretty much the same. Granted you guys have the footy, but I'm a Swans fan anyway so I get more of them up here.
 
Ithaca, NY
The most liberal city in NY (seriously the county went 85% for Obama in the general Election)
Pros:
pretty nice downtown/college town
The area is really pretty with lots of parks
Cornell
The gorges
Cons: The Hippies, its no longer the 70's
Its too liberal. The demographics make me, a moderate social Libertarian look like a conservative.
The Weather sucks sooooo bad.
The superintendent of the schools is actually a moron who refuses to incorporate snow days into the schedule
 
Why would Melbourne have better food or events than Sydney? They're mostly pretty much the same. Granted you guys have the footy, but I'm a Swans fan anyway so I get more of them up here.

Melbourne has the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. We also have a much stronger cafe culture.

In terms of events, we have the second largest comedy festival in the world, one of the four tennis Grandslams, the F1 Grand Prix (I don't want that one, I'd give it to you if I could), and the Melbourne Cup (only holiday in the word for a horse race).
I wouldn't really count AFL, because you guys have rugby. Rugby isn't as big or popular around Australia as Aussie Rules, but it is an equivalent.
 
Basic Demographic Stuff
116,760 as of the 2000 census
Located to the NE of San Fransisco
fairly diverse ethnicities

Things that are great about living there
Nice weather, generally friendly people, a lot of good camping, swimming, hiking nearby
proximity to San Fransisco and Napa etc

What sucks?
City is BANKRUPT (guess where I live...)
 
Osaka is awesome. The people are noisy, friendly and genuine. There's an infinite number of things to do. The music scene is great in this region. The food is great and cheap. Transport is just ridiculously good. Osaka is located right next to other prefectures that offer an alternative to urban chaos, be it cultural curiosities in Kyoto, peaceful tranquility in Nara, or even beaches in Wakayama. Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe are so close and so well connected that they may as well be one city. I work in fairly central Kyoto and live right in the centre of Osaka. It almost didn't occur to me to mention crime, because that just isn't something that's ever concerned me since moving here.

As far as downsides go, the summer is horrible, and I'm too busy at work to spend any time here.
 
No-one's done Sydney, New South Wales yet?

The basics

Sydney is a world city, about 4.5 million people, extremely diverse, and a magnet for people all over the world so it attracts pretty much anything you might want to see, eat, or do. It's also so sprawly and low density that by geographical area it covers about the same space as Sao Paolo or Tokyo.

Pros

-Food. This has to be one of the best cities on the planet for eating, you can find pretty much anything.

-Culture/events/etc. Again, huge city = everything comes here.

-It's actually quite beautiful. Not just the obvious harbour and rivers and beaches, but also the rest is mostly quite leafy and green.

Cons

-Politics. Terrible, wasteful, corrupt, venal politicians have pissed away huge amounts of money and mismanaged all the infrastructure, especially health and transport. The city is run by thuggish developers. The cops are mostly corrupt.

-Too sprawly. Because it's so low density, it's too big, I know people who spend 4 hours travelling each day to get to work or university. This also means the best bits of the city are concentrated in small areas and the rest is mostly suburb.

-Liquor laws and nightlife. The laws are biased towards huge violent superpubs, with very few decent small pubs or suburban pubs around. So then when there is drunken violence from this overconcentration of drinkers, everyone is surprised and the laws get changed to be MORE restrictive rather than less.

This. Although the public transport is pretty good is pretty good if you live near it, IMO. The media just likes to whinge.

Melbourne has you beat on four counts. We have better food, better events, better looking (on average), and we are more sprawly.
In terms of sprawliness, we have a larger area and half a million less people.

Better food I wouldn't have much of a clue on, apart from the fact that I reckon it would be pretty hard to beat a city that has everything. Even another city that has everything doesn't beat this, as such.

And better looking? No chance.

Why would Melbourne have better food or events than Sydney? They're mostly pretty much the same. Granted you guys have the footy, but I'm a Swans fan anyway so I get more of them up here.

Melbourne has the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. We also have a much stronger cafe culture.

In terms of events, we have the second largest comedy festival in the world, one of the four tennis Grandslams, the F1 Grand Prix (I don't want that one, I'd give it to you if I could), and the Melbourne Cup (only holiday in the word for a horse race).
I wouldn't really count AFL, because you guys have rugby. Rugby isn't as big or popular around Australia as Aussie Rules, but it is an equivalent.

Cafe ≠ food. Cafe = Coffee.

With sport, I suppose Melbourne isn't too shabby, but 1956 was longer ago than 2000. Commonwealth Games in 2006 was just to curb inter-city jealousy, which I suppose is a reasonable emotion for any Melbournian to have. ;)

But, I'll admit that Melbourne is generally regarded the cultural and sporting capital of Australia. Too bad the weather sucks.
 
cafe

noun
a small restaurant where drinks and snacks are sold

cafe=food, cafe=coffee
 
I just don't know the restaurant scene, so I didn't comment. And I assumed "food" to be referring to all edibles (and drinkables). And you might have everything, but that doesn't say anything about the quality of it.

Also, I didn't mention the Olympics because we both had it, and it is not worth arguing over whether it's better to have it first or most recently. We do have the larger stadium though, and at the time of the 56 Olympics, no stadium on Earth could hold more people.
 
I just don't know the restaurant scene, so I didn't comment. And I assumed "food" to be referring to all edibles (and drinkables). And you might have everything, but that doesn't say anything about the quality of it.

Also, I didn't mention the Olympics because we both had it, and it is not worth arguing over whether it's better to have it first or most recently. We do have the larger stadium though, and at the time of the 56 Olympics, no stadium on Earth could hold more people.

True that. In fact, I know nothing about the restaurant scene, as such, other than the fact that there is a lot of it.

And who cares about quality? That isn't required in a pissing contest. ;)
 
I'd prefer to go to a top quality stadium with 60,000 people in it than a outdated crappy one with 80,000 people in it.

But yeah capacity is all that matters in a pissing match. Dublin has the third (I think) biggest stadium in Europe by capacity so that measure suits me.
 
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