It's that time of year again.
Monocle has just released their annual Quality of Life Survey. This is their 18th annual ranking of the world's top cities according to what they do best: whether it be housing or nightlife. What I like about this survey is that it does things a little differently. Most liveability surveys tend to be a list of the world's most boring cities. It's as if uneventfulness is the measure of quality of life.
This is not that.
For example, number 3 on the list is Athens. And it's there specifically because of its nightlife. Monocle refers to it as "one of Europe's few truly 24-hour cities." Also on the list, at number 7, is Mexico City. This is a city that is required to have women-only subway cars because the men apparently can't behave in public.
Of course, it's an incredible city in so many other ways. It has leafy neighborhoods filled with the kind of mid-rise buildings that Toronto is now desperately trying to add to its major streets. And according to the survey, the city's population grew by about 600,000 people between 2019 and 2023 — many of whom came from the US and Canada.
Jumping to the top of the list, Monocle's city of the year and best all-rounder is a city that we talk a lot about on this blog: Paris. This is perhaps not surprising given the city's bold moves to pedestrianize streets, plant trees everywhere, build more than 1,000 km of bike lanes, and generally enhance the overall urban experience.
But it's not just that:
All of this, combined with the policies of the country’s most pro-business president in a long time, has helped Paris to draw and foster enough talent to snatch London’s double crown as Europe’s top venture-capital city and its leading technology hub. “Paris lends itself far more to an office-based culture than cities such as San Francisco or London,” says Jordane Giuly, the founder of fintech company Defacto. He points out that the French capital’s gentle density is conducive to cross-pollination between start-ups and preferable to the vast distances that one needs to traverse in its rivals.
For their full list of the 10 most livable cities in the world, click here.
It's that time of year again.
Monocle has just released their annual Quality of Life Survey. This is their 18th annual ranking of the world's top cities according to what they do best: whether it be housing or nightlife. What I like about this survey is that it does things a little differently. Most liveability surveys tend to be a list of the world's most boring cities. It's as if uneventfulness is the measure of quality of life.
This is not that.
For example, number 3 on the list is Athens. And it's there specifically because of its nightlife. Monocle refers to it as "one of Europe's few truly 24-hour cities." Also on the list, at number 7, is Mexico City. This is a city that is required to have women-only subway cars because the men apparently can't behave in public.
Of course, it's an incredible city in so many other ways. It has leafy neighborhoods filled with the kind of mid-rise buildings that Toronto is now desperately trying to add to its major streets. And according to the survey, the city's population grew by about 600,000 people between 2019 and 2023 — many of whom came from the US and Canada.
Jumping to the top of the list, Monocle's city of the year and best all-rounder is a city that we talk a lot about on this blog: Paris. This is perhaps not surprising given the city's bold moves to pedestrianize streets, plant trees everywhere, build more than 1,000 km of bike lanes, and generally enhance the overall urban experience.
But it's not just that:
All of this, combined with the policies of the country’s most pro-business president in a long time, has helped Paris to draw and foster enough talent to snatch London’s double crown as Europe’s top venture-capital city and its leading technology hub. “Paris lends itself far more to an office-based culture than cities such as San Francisco or London,” says Jordane Giuly, the founder of fintech company Defacto. He points out that the French capital’s gentle density is conducive to cross-pollination between start-ups and preferable to the vast distances that one needs to traverse in its rivals.
For their full list of the 10 most livable cities in the world, click here.
So each year Europe runs a program called the European Capitals of Culture. The objective is to celebrate the richness of European culture and presumably drive throngs of tourists to its various locales. They do this by choosing a set of cities, designating them "capitals of culture", and then running events and programming all throughout the calendar year in those places.
When the program was created in 1985, it was originally called the European City of Culture, as there was only one city being chosen at a time. In the first year that city was Athens. But the program has since evolved and now multiple cities are chosen each year. For 2022, the European Capitals of Culture are Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg), Kaunas (Lithuania), and Novi Sad (Serbia).
I was reading about Kaunas in FT this morning and I was fascinated to learn that this city of approximately 300,000 people has some 6,000 modernist buildings. Some are apparently in disrepair, but many remain in good form and, as part of the festival, visitors can book stays in some of the restored ones.
There is, of course, an interesting story behind these buildings.
This collection of modernist buildings is the result of a relatively narrow window of time and a specific set of circumstances. Lithuania gained independence from the former Russian Empire in 1918, following WWI and while Russia was busy fighting with itself. But at the time, its capital city Vilnius, which remains the capital today, was mostly occupied by Poland.
So Kaunas became its temporary capital city from 1920 to 1939, the latter date being when Vilnius was returned to Lithuania. This temporary designation created a tremendous need for new buildings, both public and private, and it just so happened to line up with the flourishing of European modernist architecture.
Kaunas didn't get any modernist "icons" from architects such as Le Corbusier, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Kaunas instead created its own varietal of modernism, one that incorporated elements of Art Deco and one that you could argue is now deeply symbolic of a very important moment in its history: A peaceful period of interwar freedom and optimism.
Image: Kaunas 2022
In Athens, I have a learned, there is something known as antiparochi. The practice took hold in the middle of the 20th century at a time when Athens was in desperate need of new housing. Supposedly during the 1950s, an estimated 560,000 people came to Athens from the countryside in search of opportunity -- effectively doubling the population of the city. That was a bit of a problem for a city with no money to build new housing. So something needed to be done. The solution was a ground-up arrangement (i.e. it wasn't a government initiative) that allowed developers and contractors to increase the supply of new housing without having to ever pay for land. And given the time period in which this took hold, it also spurred quite the modernist building boom, leaving an architectural legacy that to this day continues to define Athens.
Here's an explanation of how antiparochi works (taken from this BBC article by Alex Sakalis):
Here’s how it worked: a contractor would approach the owner of a house and offer him a deal. He would knock down his house, and build a block of flats in its place. In return, the homeowner would be given a certain number of flats (usually two or three), while the contractor would then make his money by selling the remaining flats to Greeks who were seeking accommodation. Generally, no money was exchanged and no contracts were signed.
What’s so incredible about antiparochi is that it emerged spontaneously out of the housing crisis in Athens. “There was no specific law which told people ‘OK now you have the right to collaborate and build whatever you like’. It was the people themselves that found out this possibility,” says Panos Dragonas, professor of Architecture at the University of Patras.
Even more incredibly, the state completely accepted what its citizens had started doing, introducing only a few minor regulations, such as a maximum height for the apartment buildings – known as polykatoikies in Greek – and a ban on building over archaeological sites or on top of Athens’ seven historical hills. There were no property taxes – the state never made any direct income from antiparochi.
The elegance of antiparochi was that it appeared to solve all of Greece’s problems at once. It provided homeowners and home seekers with modern apartments, while creating enough profit for the contractors to continue investing in construction without state subsidies or bank loans.
Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash
So each year Europe runs a program called the European Capitals of Culture. The objective is to celebrate the richness of European culture and presumably drive throngs of tourists to its various locales. They do this by choosing a set of cities, designating them "capitals of culture", and then running events and programming all throughout the calendar year in those places.
When the program was created in 1985, it was originally called the European City of Culture, as there was only one city being chosen at a time. In the first year that city was Athens. But the program has since evolved and now multiple cities are chosen each year. For 2022, the European Capitals of Culture are Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg), Kaunas (Lithuania), and Novi Sad (Serbia).
I was reading about Kaunas in FT this morning and I was fascinated to learn that this city of approximately 300,000 people has some 6,000 modernist buildings. Some are apparently in disrepair, but many remain in good form and, as part of the festival, visitors can book stays in some of the restored ones.
There is, of course, an interesting story behind these buildings.
This collection of modernist buildings is the result of a relatively narrow window of time and a specific set of circumstances. Lithuania gained independence from the former Russian Empire in 1918, following WWI and while Russia was busy fighting with itself. But at the time, its capital city Vilnius, which remains the capital today, was mostly occupied by Poland.
So Kaunas became its temporary capital city from 1920 to 1939, the latter date being when Vilnius was returned to Lithuania. This temporary designation created a tremendous need for new buildings, both public and private, and it just so happened to line up with the flourishing of European modernist architecture.
Kaunas didn't get any modernist "icons" from architects such as Le Corbusier, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Kaunas instead created its own varietal of modernism, one that incorporated elements of Art Deco and one that you could argue is now deeply symbolic of a very important moment in its history: A peaceful period of interwar freedom and optimism.
Image: Kaunas 2022
In Athens, I have a learned, there is something known as antiparochi. The practice took hold in the middle of the 20th century at a time when Athens was in desperate need of new housing. Supposedly during the 1950s, an estimated 560,000 people came to Athens from the countryside in search of opportunity -- effectively doubling the population of the city. That was a bit of a problem for a city with no money to build new housing. So something needed to be done. The solution was a ground-up arrangement (i.e. it wasn't a government initiative) that allowed developers and contractors to increase the supply of new housing without having to ever pay for land. And given the time period in which this took hold, it also spurred quite the modernist building boom, leaving an architectural legacy that to this day continues to define Athens.
Here's an explanation of how antiparochi works (taken from this BBC article by Alex Sakalis):
Here’s how it worked: a contractor would approach the owner of a house and offer him a deal. He would knock down his house, and build a block of flats in its place. In return, the homeowner would be given a certain number of flats (usually two or three), while the contractor would then make his money by selling the remaining flats to Greeks who were seeking accommodation. Generally, no money was exchanged and no contracts were signed.
What’s so incredible about antiparochi is that it emerged spontaneously out of the housing crisis in Athens. “There was no specific law which told people ‘OK now you have the right to collaborate and build whatever you like’. It was the people themselves that found out this possibility,” says Panos Dragonas, professor of Architecture at the University of Patras.
Even more incredibly, the state completely accepted what its citizens had started doing, introducing only a few minor regulations, such as a maximum height for the apartment buildings – known as polykatoikies in Greek – and a ban on building over archaeological sites or on top of Athens’ seven historical hills. There were no property taxes – the state never made any direct income from antiparochi.
The elegance of antiparochi was that it appeared to solve all of Greece’s problems at once. It provided homeowners and home seekers with modern apartments, while creating enough profit for the contractors to continue investing in construction without state subsidies or bank loans.
Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash
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