Quality of Living: The Latest Architecture and News

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has released its Global Liveability Index for 2025, assessing 173 cities worldwide across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. This year, Copenhagen has taken the top position, ending Vienna's three-year run as the world's most liveable city. The Danish capital earned high scores in stability, education, and infrastructure, narrowly surpassing Vienna, which saw a decline in its stability rating following recent security incidents. The average global liveability score for 2025 remains steady at 76.1 out of 100, unchanged from 2024. While year-on-year improvements were recorded in healthcare, education, and infrastructure, these were offset by a continued decline in stability, driven by rising geopolitical tensions, civil unrest, and increased security threats in several regions.

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The pursuit of an ideal city has long been a topic of debate among architects and urban planners. In addition to aesthetic identity and cultural heritage, the quality of life in every city represents perhaps the most important marker in this pursuit. This year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister company of The Economist, has released its Global Liveability Index 2024, highlighting the cities that excel in this ongoing quest. For the third consecutive year, Vienna ranked as the most liveable city in the world. European cities Copenhagen, Zurich, and Geneva also rank high, attributed to their smaller populations, which contribute to lower crime rates and less congestion. In comparison with the 2023 ranking, the numbers for North American and Australian cities have been dragged down by the ongoing housing crisis.

The assessment ranks 173 cities from around the world. Each city is scored based on 30 qualitative and quantitative factors evaluating 5 categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. The scores are based on external data points, in-house analysts, and in-city contributors. The category of stability has registered the biggest decline, as protests and armed conflicts increased in incidence. At the bottom of the cist, the city of Damascus, Syria, continues to be ranked as the least liveable city in the survey, followed by Tripoli, Libya, reflecting severe instability.

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CityMakers, The Global Community of Architects Who Learn from Exemplary Cities and Their Makers, is working with ArchDaily to publish a series of articles about Barcelona, Medellin, and Rotterdam. The authors are the architects, urban planners, and/or strategists of the projects that have transformed these three cities, which are visited in the "Schools of Cities" and studied in the "Documentary-Courses" made by CityMakers. On this occasion, Alejandro Restrepo Montoya, Director of Urban Planning and Architecture of Medellín, presents his article "Environmental Urbanism and Urban Geographies, Medellín 2024-2027"

Medellín's urban plan focuses on answering how urban planning can improve people's quality of life. By developing its proposal, the city is promoting the social benefits that these urban planning practices can generate. Medellín emphasizes the use of natural and environmental conditions, such as valleys, streams, rivers, mountains, and hills, to develop urban planning criteria that address social needs.

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It’s said that our ability as a species to easily form strong emotional bonds with creatures of another species is one of the unique characteristics that differentiate humans from animals. But what about the love we receive in return? Scientists have even gone as far as to measure and compare the blood pressure and oxytocin levels of our pets when we’re together, and when we’re apart, in order to prove such a fact.

With the reciprocated familial love shared between pets and owners coming close to between family members themselves, it’s no wonder our pets feel like part of our families. But why, then, are we less likely to include them in the major design decisions of our homes?

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The interest in co-living is on the rise, a direction emphasized by the merger between the largest co-living operator in the US, Common, and their European equivalent, Habyt. The two companies manage more than 4,000 apartments in the US and 7,000 apartments in Europe and Asia, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The term co-living refers to a modern form of group housing where residents share communal spaces for socializing, cooking, and gathering, and have access to shared amenities such as cleaning services or dog walking.

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Videos

The 2016 Quality of Life Conference will bring together key voices from the worlds of architecture, business, design, urbanism and culture to discuss how to improve our nations, cities and workplaces. Welcoming 200 delegates and 20 speakers from around the world, the event will be hosted at the historic Palais Ferstel by Monocle’s Editor-in-Chief Tyler Brûlé, alongside the magazine’s editors and correspondents. The summit will also be broadcast live on Monocle 24 Radio and will featured in a series of films on the Monocle website.

Mercer, a consulting leader that helps other organizations around the world advance the health, wealth and performance of their employees, releases a survey annually that helps multinational companies and other organizations compensate employees when placing them on international assignments. Their survey for the year 2012 evaluates over 221 cities around the world on their quality of living with New York City as the base city and highlights several trends that can add onto what we as designers and urban planners believe makes a city successful and livable.

Read on for the 2012 results.