Is Melbourne a better city than Sydney? The evidence is pretty much in

Sigh. Melbourne is the best city in the world, according to a Time Out global poll of 24,000 respondents. Now should be the moment for a staunch defence of Sydney – how about that Metro! – or at least some condescending remarks about weather, beaches, and younger siblings with a chip on their shoulder. Sydney is ranked 21, but we couldn’t be bothered trying too hard, as long as we’re ahead (by one place) of Paris.

We could pick holes in the Time Out methodology. Adelaide ahead of Amsterdam? Only one Italian city in the top 50, and it’s Naples? Only one French city? Marrakech in the top 25, when it’s not even the best city in Morocco? Two Brazilian cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, ahead of Sydney, when Brazil’s biggest export to Sydney is its people?

But it’s not just Time Out. The Economist’s Global Liveability Index, a more systematic attempt to rate cities based on stability, healthcare, culture, environment, education and infrastructure, has ranked Melbourne ahead of Sydney in each year it has run. The Oxford Global Cities Index, which is serious enough to place New York, London and Paris as its top three, rates Melbourne above Sydney. The evidence is pretty much in.

To be fair, if you took away Sydney’s sumptuous geography, its waterways and mountains and coastline, Melbourne does crap all over us a little bit. Its physical flatness and grid design have spread its advantages more democratically, whereas Sydney’s topographic variety has sharpened inequality.

Time Out placed Melbourne miles ahead of Sydney as a liveable city for Gen Z and younger people. “Melbourne’s coolest streets and neighbourhoods are filled with gems, from indie cinemas and rooftop bars to vinyl shops and quirky galleries,” it reports. “And don’t let anyone tell you Melbourne is all personality over looks – we’ve got grand, heritage-listed buildings, laneways lined with colourful murals, world-class gardens and a river (the Yarra) that holds deep spiritual and cultural significance for local Indigenous communities.” And thanks to its progressive politics, Melbourne is always the target of far-right social media bots showing a multicultural road to hell. So that’s another thing it’s got going for it.

Melbourne also has a new Metro, which works. And its attractions are in easy reach, unlike Sydney, where, for example, we have a brand-new fish market that you can access from the CBD via a half-hour trudge over confusing footbridges, under concrete overpasses, and through the gauntlet of shared cycleways, and when you get there, good luck finding a table and chair to eat at. Both cities carry the DNA of their foundation. Melbourne was built by free settlers; Sydney by prisoners. Melbourne was planned. Sydney, for 238 years, has just happened.

Does it have to be a competition? Well, no, but yes. (Suck on that, not-even-in-the-top-50 Brisbane!) Competition, while tiresome, benefits all. Unless it’s the American version of competition, which is for Washington DC to send militias to shoot people in cities that didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Eye-catchingly, New York was the only US city to crack Time Out’s top 30.

Time Out damns Sydney with faint praise. “Sydneysiders are also third-most likely [in the world] to call their city ‘beautiful’, with 78 per cent of locals describing it as such.” That is, we’re proud of our dumb luck. The next best thing going for Sydney? “With about 40 per cent of the city’s population having been born overseas, restaurants span every cuisine and meals are executed with finesse.” This is about as insightful as Angus Taylor defining “good immigration” by the standards of a cappuccino he once had in Cooma. Against the actual lived experience of Sydneysiders – traffic gridlock, unreliable public transport and vast disparities in access to healthcare, education and affordable housing – it’s not a whole lot to go on.

What Sydney does have going for it, however, is what Australia has going for it: it’s not too proud to borrow from elsewhere. Looking down the list of the world’s best cities, it is tempting to imagine a conglomerate, a Frankencity put together shamelessly from importation and imitation. How good would Sydney be if you could pick up inner Melbourne and plonk it beside the harbour?

The bowerbird impulse has made Sydney what it is. Copenhagen might beat Sydney in every liveability survey, but the world’s greatest work of Danish architecture sits on Bennelong Point. The jacaranda tree is native to cities like Buenos Aires but since 1850 its most vivid glories are in Sydney. Green spaces in cities don’t come better than New York’s Central Park, but the Domain, Hyde Park, Centennial Park and Barangaroo are among a vast network of Sydney’s “lungs” that activists have fought to preserve and expand. The last great Victorian-Edwardian sports pavilions are not in London but in Moore Park. Tokyo and Seoul might lead the world in social courtesy, but in Sydney the utter dickheads are still rare enough that they stand out from the crowd. Just. I might be forcing it now.

With so much of the world in flames literal or figurative, city rankings give us a chance to see the glass as half-full. In the Time Out survey, Melbourne and Sydney (and Adelaide) ranked highly in locals agreeing with the statements “My city makes me happy” and “I find joy in the everyday experiences where I live”. Personally, I find joy in the Norfolk Island pines I see when I walk my dog. I find joy in other dogs. I find joy in the always-smiling crossing guard at the local primary school, and in the intense efficiency of the man who controls the queuing system at the grocery store. I find joy in the Harbour Bridge, even if I only look at it once every so often. It makes me happy to know it’s there.

“If you’re living in Australia, and you’re not in Sydney, you’re camping out.” Paul Keating denies he spoke these words, though stealing them would be a very Sydney thing to do. Instead, in a 1995 radio interview in which he disclaimed the quote, he said, “The people [of Melbourne] have taken the natural topography and made something of it. If I look at Sydney, where I’m from, where there has always been that great advantage of the Harbour, which is the natural asset the city had, Sydney has never done as much with the rest of the place as the people of Melbourne have done with Melbourne. You can see vista upon vista here of cityscapes, and really particularly suburb development, and suburb and views, they are by and large superior to most of Australia’s cities.”

A city is what you make of it. The challenge to make Sydney is one that re-starts every day.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and regular columnist.

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