The Economist is Obviously on the Murphy Administration Payroll... but Cleveland?

From the Economist Intelligence Unit, via Pittsblog and The Burgh Blog, this little gem of an announcement:

A new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit assessing the "liveability" of 127 cities worldwide has found Vancouver to be the most attractive destination. The survey shows cities in Canada, Australia, Austria and Switzerland as the most ideal destinations thanks to a widespread availability of goods and services, low personal risk and an effective infrastructure.

...

Although higher crime rates and a greater threat of terror puts US cities below those of Canada, US cities are still among the world's most liveable. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are the joint best scoring cities in the United States (7%), in joint 26th place in the global ranking. A lack of availability of recreational activities and certain infrastructural shortfalls put Lexington as the least liveable US city surveyed, in 56th place-although its rating of 13% is still low.

...

The Economist Intelligence Unit's liveability ranking is an expansion on the methodology of previous "Hardship" surveys that have been published. In addition to the factors that were previously attributed to specifically causing hardship a number of other factors have been included to give a more rounded impression of how liveable a city is.

The survey takes over 40 factors into consideration which are weighted across five different categories: Stability; Healthcare; Culture & Environment; Education; and Infrastructure. Across the survey a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data are used, which are combined to give an overall Quality of Life Index rating. Each indicator is given a rating of between one and five, where one means there is no impact and five means the factor is extremely challenging. These are then weighted to produce an index, where 0% means the a city is exceptional and 100% means it is intolerable.

Shit, there goes my rant for today; all is now sunshine and lollypops.

Still, waiting to hear about the criteria, though... bet it doesn't measure Custard Consumption.

More as this breaking news... um... breaks.

UPDATE: Via Amos the Poker Cat: The National Business Review.