The 'Livability' Trap

What does it mean for a city to be one of the world's most livable—and who gets to make that decision? Choosing and weighting criteria for "livability" has turned into its own cottage industry. Generally, the word conjures up images of low crime, access to green space, tidy streets, and solid transit. The last three must have counted in Washington, D.C.'s favor when it was named the best U.S. city (and world's 14th best) by the the Economist Intelligence Unit last year.

That decision generated yet another round of rankings criticism. Opponents accused the Economist of an anti-urbanism, saying the magazine bypassed the world's most cosmopolitan or fastest-growing cities in favor of duller (if easier) locales. But being clean and quiet doesn't make a place less authentically urban per se. The real problem is that these conceptions are at once too narrow, because they exclude other valid ways of living in and interacting with cities, and too broad, because they rely on so many personal preferences that they end up being meaningless.