Vienna top city for quality of living

VIENNA was again this year ranked first in the world for quality of living. Its city centre is a Unesco World Heritage site, internationally recognised as one of the globes’ most innovative cities and a it is recipient of the UN most prestigious human settlements award for its soft urban renewal programme that did not see poorer residents pushed out.

Austria’s population is among the wealthiest in the EU and the differences between the rich and the poor are among the smallest in the Union.

But 60% of Viennese live in what we would call ‘social housing’ , although, according to Michaela Kauer, “nobody sees themselves as working-class in Vienna, everyone sees themselves as middle-income”.