Famous cities don't have happy residents

The top cities in Canada, as rated by folks who live there, are Saint John, New Brunswick, followed by Quebec City, and such where's-that-again? places as Charlottetown and Moncton, N.B., and Kitchener, Ontario. Victoria? Dead last, tied with booming Calgary. Vancouver was 12th (of 18 cities measured) and Toronto was 15th.

According to the researchers, headed by John Helliwall, an economist at the University of British Columbia, the chief determinant of local satisfaction are established neighborhoods with high levels of local engagement. Helliwell told The Vancouver Sun:

Neighbourhoods that work, in the sense of producing trusting neighbours, are ones where they spend a lot of time with each other, thinking about each other, and doing things with each other. In places where that's natural or easier to achieve, it happens more readily.

Cities such as Seattle and Portland do have neighborhoods that work this way, but they are also trying to compete in the international livability sweepstakes, where wealth, job-churn, and other transitory factors work against local satisfaction. These cities make the national magazines and attract investment, tourists, and part-time residents, but they likely don't produce a lot of highly satisfied residents.

Such cities are also turning into urban theme parks, with recognizable imports from other internationally acclaimed cities. A good example is New Songdo City in Korea, which will become "a Western-style haven in a strategic part of Asia," according to a story in The New York Times.

Urban planners scoured the world for inspiration and came up with a Central Park of 100 acres, a Venice-inspired seawater canal, a scuplture garden, Park Avenue-like residential towers and hotels, bike paths, Parisian tree-lined boulevards, Savannah-style pocket gardens, a museum by a star architect (Peter Zumthor), and a Sydney-style opera house.

Songdo is a parody, but it points to a serious international trend for cut-and-paste urbanism, one-of-each monuments, and imported familiarity. That's a long way from St. John, N.B.

• David Brewster is Crosscut's publisher. You can e-mail him at david.brewster@crosscut.com.