[dustinmoris]

I'm originally from Vienna too and now living in London and I can see the differences very well, but the main reason why Vienna is rated so highly is because the population has remained mostly consistent for a long period of time.

However, Vienna isn't without its faults. In Vienna you have a huge segregation between better and worse off people. You have a lot of low income people living in places like the 10th district and people in higher income brackets living in Doebling for example. This is counter productive in the long run as it will slowly create "ghettos" and mono cultures within the city. In London the wealth gap is much higher than in Vienna and yet people live more closely together. You can walk down a millionaires street one second and in the next moment be surrounded by council housing. In my opinion this is much better, as it prevents places from turning into ghettos and helps to keep the city in a sane state. There is a lot of gentrification happening in some parts of London too, but this is more of a side effect of the consistent growth rather than segregation.

The other problem which I see is that the average person in Vienna does not own any property. Most people are in rental properties for most of their lives and they mostly rely on a future state pension in order to retire. To me this is a fragile system, because it forces the country/makes it reliant on a highly taxed middle class. It is extremely difficult to prosper from middle class to being rich in Vienna - for the better or worse.

The entry barrier to creating a new company and the huge amount of regulation also makes it extremely unfriendly for startups and innovation.

Long story short, socialist cities in a capitalist Western country only thrive as long as the population is small enough and stable for a long period of time. It takes many years to build new schools, hospitals, GPs, train lines and bus routes, whereas it takes only a few weeks for an individual family to settle in a new place. If a city undergoes a massive growth in population then it doesn't even matter if everyone who moves into the city is a hard working high tax paying person, because the new money which they bring in will not be able to keep up with building the necessary infrastructure to comfortably accommodate everyone. It will take decades to catch up and only if there ever will be a slow down of growth, otherwise it will be a never ending chase.