Apparently Melbourne Is the World’s 4th Most Exciting City

So you know Time Out? Well, every year they run this thing called the The Time Out City Life Index, which rates cities everywhere on how happy and excited their residents are. And this year Melbourne came forth, with nine out of 10 locals saying they've felt happy in the past 24 hours.

For anyone living in Melbourne and feeling competitive, we beat London—which bizarrely came in fifth—but we got beaten by Chicago, Porto, and New York, in that order.

The publication polled 15,000 people from 32 cities around the world, asking them a bunch of questions that they distilled into a list of exciting cities. In this way they found that 89 percent of Melbournians enjoy living here. Two out of three people also said it was easy to make friends, while the city (somehow) ranked highly in terms of affordability.

Now let me just chime in here to say that I was born and bred in Melbourne. And sure, it’s a fine place where you can drink the tap water and trams exist, but is it really the fourth most exciting city in the world? And should we really be awarded “world's most liveable city” seven years in a row? Well jeez, I don’t know.

Because Melbourne is flat. Port Phillip Bay is just one big dog beach. We’re ringed by 100 kilometres of mission brown homes and Bunnings Warehouses. We bang on a lot about graffiti and laneways, even though most of the developed world is made entirely out of graffiti and laneways. Melbourne is a place that gets international bands on a semi-regular basis, expect for P!nk, who is here at least nine times a month. And we don’t lead the world in any particular technology, sport, philosophy, or art. We just truck along, awarding ourselves lots of first prizes, while clamoring to be second at everything. Melbourne is comfortable. Melbourne is fine. Melbourne is definitely better than London, but Melbourne is not the fourth most exciting place in the whole world.

But anyway, apparently I’m wrong. Because Melbourne is the fourth most exciting place in the whole world.

@MorgansJulian