[limeyy]

Acquiring wealth is certainly a crucial attribute on making a city "livable", and it's completely left out here.

Just because ISIS mentions a cities name, does not really mean it makes the city less livable. This article isn't Economist worthy.

[radicaldreamer]

The more you know about any particular subject, you start to realize that the Economist is not all that great and it really makes you question what they know about things you might not know a lot about.

[_swa8]

The Economist is following mainstream journalism in general, then.

[Quequau]

sadly yes.

[aphextron]

Completely agreed. Their science podcast is absolute garbage, and I've stopped reading the magazine because of it.

[collyw]

Their area of focus is economics after all. Economists never seem to be able to agree on anything except in hindsight.

[legulere]

Exactly, and with enough money, pretty much every city is very livable.

[guard-of-terra]

> with enough money, pretty much every city is very livable

Unless your idea of fun is sitting all day behind tall fence, this might be false for a huge number of cities in Eastern Europe and perhaps Africa.

Imagine that there's basically no roads. That every road in the city looks like this: http://izhevsk.ru/forums/icons/forum_pictures/005326/5326795... Imagine a thick cover of mud on said streets also, Deadwood-style.

You can surely buy a huge expensive car but you can't buy roads, and not only that.