S’pore slips on Monocle ranking

Source : Business Times - 14 Oct 2008

SINGAPORE now ranks 22nd on Monocle magazine’s World’s Top 25 Most Liveable Cities list, down from 17th position a year ago.

Monocle is a global affairs, business, culture and design magazine set up by Tyler Brule, formerly editor of influential lifestyle magazine Wallpaper*.

While Singapore scores high in some aspects of liveability, including the efficiency of Changi Airport, Mr Brule said that its 2008 ranking suffered from ‘tolerance issues’.

In Singapore to speak at ArchiFest 08, he said that there are three main ingredients to a liveable city: ‘density, diversity and design’.

While Mr Brule did not elaborate on the ‘tolerance issues’, he said that communities need to be able to ‘breathe’ and ‘you have to take the good with the bad’.

Monocle’s ranking goes beyond the usual metrics that only look at factors such as housing costs and the availability of schools.

It also looks at softer issues such as the possibility of getting a good glass of wine at one o’clock in the morning; the quality of new architecture; the ease of setting up a business and even the number of cinema screens per city.

For instance, Monocle found that 5,000 businesses start up in Copenhagen every year while Paris has 376 cinema screens.

Global transport connections; communications; innovative environmental initiatives; a low crime rate; attractive architecture and strong public services help cities advance up the list.

Poor urban planning, crime, disconnected transport links and a lack of urban village life all count against.

Mr Brule also said that liveable cities have to ‘evolve’. As such, 2008 saw a shake-up in the rankings, with Copenhagen usurping the top spot, pushing Munich one place down.

Tokyo also moved up one spot to take third place.

More significantly, there were six new entrants - Berlin, Fukuoka, Amsterdam, Minneapolis, Lisbon and Portland - to the Top 25 list. Auckland, previously in 16th position, was among those that were pushed out altogether.

Mr Brule challenged some notions of liveability. For instance, he noted that while environmental initiatives which remove cars from the streets can do wonders to curb toxic emissions, it can also kill whole neighbourhoods by depriving shopowners of passing trade and leaving districts feeling lifeless and menacing.

He said that governments worldwide are realising that it is no longer enough to be just a financial centre, and that it is also important to be a design capital.

Design does not need to be a big-ticket item either. It just needs to instil ‘a sense of wonder’, Mr Brule said.

Highlighting a small public toilet designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Tadao Ando in Omotesando Hills, Japan that moved him, Mr Brule added: ‘You don’t need a ferris wheel. You just need a great place to pee.’