What Makes a City Truly Liveable?

It says something about the state of the world — and what we now expect from it — that “liveability” has become an aspiration. Not ambition, not achievement. Just a quiet, almost bureaucratic ideal: that a person might be able to go about their life without being constantly interrupted by failure.

Every year, I read the Global Liveability Index and laugh. Every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks 173 cities according to how easy they are to live in. It looks at things like infrastructure, healthcare, education, public safety, environment — the kinds of civic scaffolding that hold up a functioning life. This year, the punchline was Copenhagen. Congratulations, Denmark. You’ve won life.

In 2025, Copenhagen dethroned Vienna to become the most liveable city in the world. It scored a perfect 100 in three out of five categories – stability, education, and infrastructure. 

For the rest of us, the award arrives like a taunt. A glossy, well-meaning reminder that somewhere in the world, people wake up in cities that function — where public infrastructure works without prayers or jugaad and where tap water is not an act of courage. I’d like to see what a perfect 100 feels like. My guess is it smells like clean air, looks like punctual buses, and doesn’t involve begging a customer care executive for the refund you were promised four months ago.

On paper, the difference between these cities is marginal. In practice, it may be more telling.

Vienna lost its edge not because its fundamentals collapsed, but because its grip on stability loosened. A foiled attack at a city train station. A bomb threat ahead of a Taylor Swift concert. Minor events, maybe, in the grand scale of global unrest, but enough to shift its perception of safety. And in an age where ambient anxiety has become a shared condition, that perception counts for more than it once did.

Copenhagen, meanwhile, has remained remarkably still. Not static, but composed. Its public infrastructure is quietly impeccable — buses and trains arrive as they should, digital services function as expected, and cycling, rather than driving, is the default. Education is free. Healthcare, universal. Crime, comparatively rare. People trust their government. People trust each other. And for the most part, the system holds.

To someone reading this from Mumbai, Nairobi, Manila, or São Paulo — cities with their own charms and complexities — the list can read like fantasy. There are places, we’re told, where people don’t spend half their mental energy preempting failure. Where they don’t have to hack the system just to access what’s already theirs. Where being middle class doesn’t mean outsourcing the state’s responsibilities to private players — the school, the hospital, the water filter, the air purifier, the security guard, the generator.

In Copenhagen, that redundancy doesn’t exist. Because the system doesn’t routinely fail.

Does that mean that being boring is the new standard? There’s trust in the city, in the system, and mostly in the people living amongst each other.

That trust may be the most valuable — and elusive — civic resource of all.

What Copenhagen offers isn’t just safety or efficiency, but something harder to quantify: a sense that one’s life is not constantly under negotiation. That the day-to-day isn’t a gauntlet of logistical failures or frayed nerves. That things will work — not perfectly, but well enough to let you live without friction. In many cities, that ease has become a luxury. In Copenhagen, it’s baseline.

It also helps that the city is compact and legible — dense without being overwhelming, small enough to feel familiar, large enough to offer texture. A person can cross it by bike in under an hour, past harbour baths clean enough to swim in, down streets where historical buildings sit easily beside new ones.

Copenhagen’s real success might lie in what it refuses to compromise on.

There’s an environmental consciousness here that doesn’t feel like branding. A power plant with an artificial ski slope on its roof is less a photo op than a statement of intent. Trash is repurposed into public art. New districts are designed around the 15-minute city model. The city’s vision of progress is not only about innovation — it’s about integration, about embedding sustainability into daily life without fanfare.

The same can be said for its culture. Copenhagen is not a city that demands attention. It does not try to impress you. It simply insists, quietly and continuously, on being a place where living feels possible — even pleasant. The workweek is shorter. Time off is protected. And while salaries are high, the real currency seems to be time: time to rest and chill.

And yet, we’re not encouraged to be angry about it. We’re told to be inspired.

Look at Copenhagen! They recycle! Their children walk to school unaccompanied! They’ve got floating saunas and ski slopes on power plants! This could be us — if only we were less corrupt, more civic-minded, more Scandinavian.

Never mind the centuries of different urban planning, the welfare systems, the tax structures, the demographic coherence. No, clearly the problem is that we’re just not grateful enough.

“Liveability,” as the index defines it, isn’t a neutral measure. It’s a kind of global gaslighting. It asks: Why aren’t your cities working like this? But it doesn’t ask: Who were they ever designed to work for?

Of course, no place is perfect.

The healthcare system, though universal, has its bureaucratic delays. Winters are long, dark, and punishing. The social fabric, while strong, can feel opaque to outsiders — immigrant communities report a different version of the city, one where access doesn’t always equate to belonging. Even the ease of speaking English, so often celebrated, can be a double-edged sword, keeping newcomers at arm’s length from deeper integration.

Still, Copenhagen’s position atop the rankings says something about the kind of cities we’re beginning to value. Not the flashiest, or the wealthiest, or even the most culturally dominant — but the ones that feel durable. The ones that hold. And in a world increasingly shaped by instability — geopolitical, economic, environmental — that might be the most radical thing a city can do.