Commentary

Urban planning was once an Olympic event, although the first gold medal – awarded to Germany’s Alfred Hensel for the Nuremberg stadium – turned out to be an unfortunate choice. The Rio games, while a great achievement for Brazil, highlighted some of the challenges associated with hosting the Olympics. 

We all love rankings. There are city ranking indexes that show which cities are the most liveable, sustainable, economically influential and so on. However, what do these rankings mean for the people who live in these cities and what kind of liveable city ranking do we actually need?