I love exploring the world via Google Earth, Street View, and various websites, doing case studies, reviewing countries and comparison, paying most attention to living conditions, real estate market, housing and apartment buildings, infrastructure and public transport.
Rules:
– ONE city per country, is not mandatory to be the capital or the largest city.
– City should have at least 1 million people, never mind of Venice.
– Should be taken in consideration as many points is possible, but biggest point is for the living conditions. This ranking is like “Best cities to LIVE” not “Best cities to VISIT (as tourist)”.
– The ranking is not related with the photos. I just added one random landmark photo for each city.
United States is a country of contrasts. Skyscrapers in downtown and low-density landed houses in suburbs. Despite of being one of the wealthiest countries of the world and having one of the highest costs of living in the world, American face income inequality and many living under poverty line. This article is valid at some extent for Canada, Australia and New Zeeland too.
North Korea is an interesting country for being full of mysteries, it is widely considered as the worst place to live. In reality, it is not that worse, living there is just… different than the rest of world.
South Korea may be one of the best places to live, being one of the most developed countries in the world, one of the world’s fastest growing economies from 1970s to 1990s. South Korean society emphasizes the family, not the community, and the apartment design reflect that.
Hong Kong is the most vertical city in the world according Emporis Skyline Ranking, beating cities like New York, Singapore, or Sao Paulo in the number of high-rises (with over 12 storeys) or skyscrapers (over 100 and 150 meters in height), but this contrasts with the extremely small and expensive apartments, typical size is 35-45 sqm for 3-room and 50-60 sqm for 4-room.
Housing in Europe is pretty similar all over the continent. Western Europe have beautiful buildings while ugly public housing is hidden at city outskirts to improve standard of living of the poor, while in Eastern Europe you see ugly public housing everywhere, socialists governments demolished most landed houses inside cities including historical monuments and forced everyone, even the rich class, to move in low quality apartments.
The greatest thing of Singapore is the public housing, built by Housing and Development Board, it is the home for 80% of Singaporeans, from low to middle class. The other 20% of housing stock is composed by private apartments, condos, landed houses and traditional shophouses.
Malaysia have a total of 7,346,910 housing units, of which Detached 2,416,210, Semi-detached 528,408, Terrace/link 2,570,317, Townhouse 32,682, Cluster 63,345, Flat 744,187, Apartment or condominium 716,729, few more housing types do exist (as 2010). Home ownership ratio 72.5%.
Japan is one of the best places to live, the economy boomed after World War II but since 1990s the rising was very slow, it is still one of the most advanced economies in the world, highest standard of living, where everything run as it should, BUT… Japan is also one of the ugliest of all developed countries. They simply suck at architecture and urban planning. Except the downtown with skyscrapers, Tokyo skyline is dominated by ugly dense buildings and lots of cables hanging on streets.
Latin America have a wide variety of housing, from ultra-luxury apartment towers to slums (favelas). “Verticalization” is a symbol of progress, real estate developers are building numerous apartment towers aimed to middle class, at same time there is massive deficit of affordable housing. Despite of high human development index, the income inequality is huge, high number of people living in poverty generate high crime rate.
The Philippines is a beautiful country until we talk about living conditions and government. One of the poorest countries in the world, ruled by one of the most corrupted governments in the world. Corruption and geography isolation keep foreign investment away, good paying jobs are hard to be found, so about 10% of country population is working overseas, and build beautiful houses when they return home.
Africa is the least studied region of world by me. Known for poverty and civil wars, I though that is nothing interesting there, until recently… Africa does have interesting architecture that worth studying!
Housing in India is dominated by low-rise apartment buildings, houses with high land coverage (back-to-back terraced-like houses) and slums. Some houses are inner lots, access being via 1.5-meter wide passages under other houses, and ventilated only by small airwells).
Chinese cities are monotonous (like South Korea cities), having rows of linear buildings with identical apartments all over the city. Since 2000s the number of skysrapers and high-rise buildings increased rapidly.
Vietnam is known for their extremely narrow and tall houses, this happened due to a former property tax based on house frontage (similar law did existed in Netherlands in 16th-18th centuries).
Philadelphia City Hall (1901), Singer Building (1908), Metropolitan Life Tower (1909), Woolworth Building (1913), Equitable Building (1915), Bank of Manhattan Trust Building (1930), Chrysler Building (1930), Empire State Building (1931), World Trade Center (1971), Sears Tower (1973), CN Tower (1976), Petronas Towers (1998), Taipei 101 (2004), Shanghai World Financial Center (2008), Burj Khalifa (2010), Jeddah Tower (under construction).