What do you really want out of a city? And what can you do without?With the environment top of the agenda in mayors` offices around theworld, Monocle looks beyond the recycling bins and congestion chargesto see what makes for a liveable city. Tolerance, punctual transit,plenty of sunshine and the ability to get a drink in the wee hours allcount for something.

Our mission for this issue is a simple one - we want to improve theurban experience. It`s a tricky enough task for forward-thinking localgovernments to tackle, let alone a media brand, but we`ve been thinkingabout this theme since our launch and decided the best time to engagepoliticians, developers, architects, financiers and anyone else who hasinfluence or an opinion about city-life was while they were stretchedout, relaxed, taking the sun and fully focused on their own quality oflife. By the time you`ve finished reading this issue we hope you`ll besuitably moved to join our sun-lounger revolution and become an activeplayer in raising the bar in whatever port you call home.

Before we go any further, however, we should start by defining a fewterms. For avoidance of doubt, this is a quality of life survey andshould not be confused with a ranking of the world`s best financialcenters, a listing of the top cities to be an expat or a rating of theleading centers of innovation. Our focus is firmly fixed on identifyingthe components and forces that make a city not simply attractive orwealthy but truly liveable. Researched over a three-month period, ourquality of life survey is 50 per cent scientific {we`ll come to ourmetrics shortly} and 50 per cent subjective {sometimes a place justrubs you the wrong way and you`re not quite sure why}. We feel thecombination of raw data mixed with opinion offers a more accuratepicture of urban environments than just relying on numbers. Indeed, thewhole concept of liveability couldn`t be more subjective territory.

For some a truly liveable city is one that offers endlessopportunity. Baghdad is a city full of opportunity at the moment butnot exactly offering superior quality of life. Even if someone likedbeing cloistered inside the green zone and enjoyed spending their daysstaring online at their bank balance, there`s a good chance they`d alsodevote many hours to daydreaming about where they`d eventually like tolive.

Of course you don`t have to reside in Mogadishu or Basra or Kabul tohave fantasies about living in a city that`s cleaner, safer, friendlieror better connected. In fact, most of us spend our entire lives tryingto imagine what life must be like in that special place just beyond thesnow-capped peaks. Surely it`s a lush, green valley where the sunalways shines, the locals are both polite and attractive, the youthwell-behaved and respectful, the trains run on time, the streets areimmaculate, the Wi-Fi coverage complete and the coffee made by baristasfrom Trieste. Which brings us to the metrics of our survey.

Conscious of the fact that there are other quality of life indexesout there, we asked ourselves what matters most in an urbanenvironment. We also questioned whether it`s really fair that a "city"like Berne has the right to come in the top 10 of so many indexes. Tolevel out the playing field and reflect that this is a Monocle qualityof life survey, the first metric a city had to meet was that it boastedinternational, long-haul connections combined with a well-managed,thoughtfully designed airport. This took care of Berne.

We then looked at both murder rates and domestic burglaries and thiskicked most US cities out of the running. After that we measured twokey civic components: state education and health care. These proved achallenge for London.

This was followed by two of the most important metrics for betterliving: hours of sunshine and average temperatures. There was a m
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