Living the good life in San Francisco

The Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, is arguably one of the best places in the world to live.

There are great neighborhoods (The Mission, The Marina, North Beach), scenic places to spend a day (Crissy Field, Golden Gate Park, Twin Peaks), and, if you complain about the weather, you need to be dropped off in Phoenix at the height of summer or Minnesota in the dead of winter.

Those factors and others were recognized this week, when San Francisco earned the second highest rating among U.S. cities in a new quality of living survey conducted by Mercer, just behind Honolulu. 420 cities worldwide were rated on 10 different categories, including housing, natural environment, public services and transportation (clearly they didn’t ride Muni), health and sanitation, and political environment.

On its website, Mercer stated that it conducts the survey to “help governments and multi-national companies compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments.”

San Francisco keeps some pretty good company as it tied with Paris and Adelaide, Australia for 30th overall on the list. Boston, Massachusetts is the next U.S. city on the list.

If you ever hear a friend complain about living in San Francisco, just tell them it could be worse; they could be living in Baghdad, Iraq, which finished with the lowest quality of living rating.