According to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canberra is the best place to live in the world. The report uses a measure called "regional well-being" which is based on nine topics: income, jobs, health, access to services, environment, education, safety, civic engagement and housing. Each region or area is scored on a scale of 1 to 10 on each of the nine topics.
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| Photo taken in 2011 at Cockington Green Gardens, Canberra |
The measure aims to go beyond just traditional measures like GDP and other economic measures to be able to also capture quality of life and answer the question "How's life?" in your area. The study is interesting and is done with the hope that communities and policy makers use it to learn what works (or what doesn't work). It appears though that the study is somewhat limited as it only includes 34 countries.
On a personal note, I've been to Canberra and I think it's a pretty nice place to live. It's clean, quiet, and not overly populated. There are lots of good schools, great housing options and a growing job market. Overall, probably not a bad choice at all to be named best place to live.