00:00 They are beautiful cities, without a doubt, all the cities that make the list, but what
00:07 the Economic Intelligence Unit actually bases these assessments on, they're designed for
00:12 remuneration packages for expats.
00:14 So pretty much they're designed for transient people who are earning a lot of money.
00:20 So yes, they typically are expensive.
00:22 They're created through a bunch of indicators that focus on private services predominantly,
00:29 and that's something that we, in terms of all the research I've been doing with myself
00:34 and colleagues, recognise is actually not being important.
00:37 What's important in terms of livability is that people, just looking back to your previous
00:42 article, is around people can actually afford to live.
00:47 People can afford to go about their daily business.
00:50 They can find employment.
00:52 They can find education for their children that they don't have to pay exorbitant fees
00:56 for.
00:57 You can actually engage in your community.
00:59 There's public open spaces.
01:01 You can walk places.
01:02 You can cycle places.
01:03 You're not reliant on cars and you're protecting the planet.
01:06 They are the things that actually matter.
01:08 But when you actually drill down into the global indicators rankings that gets wheeled
01:12 out every year, it's all about basically what suits people who are pretty well off and are
01:21 able to access things and pay for things the way that they want.
01:26 And you say too that this list tend to just basically focus on privatisation and erode
01:33 public infrastructure.
01:35 But then you also say that rating a city's progress in achieving the sustainable development
01:40 goals may be a better benchmark.
01:43 What does that involve?
01:45 That's a United Nations initiative and by 2030 it's underpinned by 17 goals.
01:54 The real focus of that is peace and prosperity for people and the planet.
01:57 So it actually picks up the issues around the climate emergency, which EIU, the Economic
02:03 Intelligence Unit, doesn't address at all.
02:06 So it's thinking about how we can actually reduce inequities and bring everyone with
02:11 us.
02:12 So in terms of everyone can be employed, everyone has access to education, everyone has access
02:16 to healthcare.
02:18 And that's really important when we see actually what happens when people don't have access
02:22 to these things.
02:23 We see a faction between and fractures really between the right and the left extremism.
02:30 You see often when there's high levels of poverty, there's high levels of crime, which
02:35 makes it a really horrible place for anyone to live.
02:40 So we need to be thinking about the global initiatives and talking about the sustainable
02:46 development goals.
02:48 In terms of countries' progress, no country is on track to achieve all 17 goals by 2030.
02:55 And what we're actually seeing is a decline in the progress towards the goals, Australia
02:59 included.
03:00 So here we are being ranked, I think there's five Australian cities in the top 20 of the
03:05 world's most livable cities, but yet we're not actually achieving what we've signed up
03:10 to in terms of what creates a livable city.
03:15 On the global scale, we're just not delivering.
03:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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