The Mercer 2009 Worldwide Quality of Living Survey has just been released and NZ’ers and Aucklanders alike have cause for celebration. From their 5th place ranking of 2008 Auckland has now nudged up one more place to 4th (well 4th equal with Vancouver). Auckland now enjoys the illustrious company of sharing the top 5 with Vienna, Zurich and Geneva to round out the top 5 and also importantly be the top city in the region.
This vindication of the quality of life that one third of NZ’ers enjoy living in Auckland seems though to have slipped the attention of the “Auckland” newspaper the NZ Herald. I came across the story whilst reading the Melbourne Age whilst over in Australia today. Whilst Melbourne is ranked 18th that city felt it worthy of running a key story of the day and appears on their home page. The NZ Herald despite my review of the online digital print version and the online website shows absolutely no signs of the story! Rather and in a somewhat telling judgment of what some may say is typical of newspapers to sell bad news is the story that some parts of the new proposed “Super City” will pay higher water rates. Clearly I recognise that the issue of a global flu epidemic is a key news story but one would think that a balance of stories would provide a rich news experience for a newspaper and its readers.
Auckland is a wonderful place to live and work, sure it has its problems – most major developed and growing cities have their problems – those problems are the consequences of the growth of this city which now can challenge to be a credible place to live and work within the Asia Pacific region, a region which no doubt is going to be the powerhouse of the global economy for the next two decades. So with this as a backdrop of economic focus what better opportunity is there for our major city to face outward to Asia and being the number 1 ranked city in the region to attract business and talent to come and live and grow to the benefit of all New Zealanders.
The only caveat is the need for Auckland to plan, act and execute as a cohesive and progressive outwardly focused city – the plan for the new central single governing body is the solution to the factional infighting, narrow parochial patch protection and myriad of duplicated of bureaucracies that has plagued Auckland for decades. The vision for Auckland was crafted back in 2001 when a smart group of passionate Aucklander’s decided that these impediments to growth needed some greater public exposure and international benchmarking. So with private funding and broad based representation a new organisation was born “Competitive Auckland” – its vision was to assist and challenge the governance and leadership of local and national government to ensure that Auckland could attain its rightful place as a leading global city of the Asia Pacific region.
That organisation is still active today – it has morphed into the Committee for Auckland and has played a significant role in spearheading the initiative for a single governance body for Auckland. The organisation does not seek to capture the headlines as a self serving promotional vehicle, rather it likes to use its influence and capabilities to effect change and bring together the people who can makes the difference and who have the mandate and resources to effect such change. Auckland and NZ has much to thank this organisation for, as it has in its own way contributed significantly to the current ranking of Auckland and will continue to contribute this great city’s future.
Disclosure of interest, I was the Executive Director of Competitive Auckland and The Committee for Auckland from 2002 to 2004.
UPDATE – in the time it has taken me to write this blog post I see that the NZ Herald online has posted the story – pity it missed the printed version earlier – but then again why would you read the print version when the web version is always the most comprehensive and up-to-date!
This will be a great post to link to for all people who contact us by email from overseas enquiring about moving here. Should help convince them to choose Auckland over any other NZ city.
It is a good idea to put the Mercer study into perspective: it’s designed to rank cities to calculate hardship allowances for transfers of corporate expats, a very small fraction of the population. It is not designed to show which cities are best for emigrating to. You would not use the study to base a decision on moving to Ak, unless your corporate sponsor is footing the bill. For the same reasons, the decision to move to Vienna, Zurich and Geneva should be based on what you can afford and how you can fend yourself, not on their 1,2, or 3 Mercer ranking.
Ross,
Naturally would be delighted to see this as a valuable reference point, however this is not about Auckland vs. Wellington vs. Dunedin – this is about the global challenge for talent. NZ cannot afford to try and pitch every facet (city) of the country to attract talent, we need to recognise that only Auckland has the scale and credentials to pitch as a global city (just in the same way that Wiatakere cannot pitch – that is further vindication of the single Auckland city proposal).
J.C. – Yes I completely concur that Mercer are a global relocation services company primarily focused on corporates. But just as I stated above to Ross, the challenge for NZ and with that the role of Auckland is to fight for creative talent – talent (especially information technology based talent) is and wants to be mobile, and unlike traditional manufacturing based talent where people follow capital flows, the new paradigm is that capital flows follow talent.
This is the hypothesis of Prof Richard Florida who in the books he has written starting with The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life – outlines this business model for cities to compete for talent. The great news is that Auckland is competing and has great natural advantages and the potential to be rated ever higher if it can ascribe to this principle to attract and retain creative talent.
I agree that capital can flows follow talent and countries/cities need to attract creative talent. I do also believe that talented people will usually move to “centers of excellence” (the Bay Area springs to mind) where like-minded people live, study, and work. Unfortunately, I don’t think Auckland is a “center of excellence” for creative talent despite its wonderful natural advantages (and a high incidence of talented people in many areas), and the Mercer study is definitely not a measure of its potential in that regard.
Mercer also conducts a “most expensive city” survey. Tokyo and Osaka are constantly ranked in the top 5 every year, but as anyone familiar with the cities knows, the cost of living is not that much more expensive than any other city in Asia, Europe and North America. The problem with the survey is that it is designed to calculate expensiveness as how it relates to expats who are transferred to Japan on corporate assignments, not the cost of living for the average person. Therefore, it is largely insignificant as a measure, yet it still makes the major newspapers every year.
J.C. – there is the point! – newspapers need headlines to sell papers to satisfy shareholder expectations of ROI. The headline is the story and often the source and sample analysis is conveniently ignored for the sake of the headline.
In the spirit of openness and transparency – this blog as with other blogs develop posts as a means of securing the nirvana of “Google juice” to drive traffic – for financial gain or customer gain. Equally blog post headlines are often scripted optimise search engine ranking.
Thanks Alistair, I believe you shook me out of a rather narrow way of thinking there!