World's Next Great Cities - Forbes. Warsaw 8.

8. Warsaw, Poland

Overall score: 56.77

Economic and commercial environment: 8.4

Economic growth and development: 4.56

Business environment: 10.81

Financial services environment: 5.12

Commercial connectivity: 5.5

Education and IT connectivity: 5.43

Quality of life: 8.2

Risk and security: 8.76

forbes.com/home/2008/10/23/cities-world-ten-forbeslife-cx_mw_1023cities.html

very interesting. nice to see bangkok in there as well. i wonder if they take air pollution into account as far as quality of life. I love bangkok but the air makes it difficult. thats a funny picture of warsaw. just the old town. not the picture one sees every day living here though

How many places have you been to?

hmm well difficult to say exactly but quite a bit of asia

Impressive to see Warsaw, Poland on the list! Another comparison that should be compiled is "World's Nicest Villages to Reside In". :-) Should make for an interesting read.

I think it would be easier to say whether a village is nice or not. Easier than for a city, mostly due to scale. The only problem is one of another kind of scale. There may be a few too many to choose from. A village should certainly have: more than one drinking establishment, a village green, some horses, at least one shop preferaby including one random one - "a hardware shop in a tiny village like this?" A really good village is easy to escape from as well.

Warsaw is not a village, so I'm posting in the wrong place really. Are there any horses in Warsaw? (Suprisingly serious question.)

Mainly Chinese, no surprises there. Very up and coming. The Scottish cities weren't on the list because they are already great :)

Budapest deserves to be way up there. 3rd slot, pretty good.

Isnt it a 'maybe' list? ... Should it be taken so seriously?

yes there are. besides stables of private owners and the police there are some horse drawn carriages. some of the streets even have signs forbidding the use of horses

If there was a Polish city in a high position, it would be taken deadly serious.

as seriously as any experts's predictions.

Even if Warsaw reaches the 8th position...its not bad.

I am surprised to see no Krakow.

McCoy is right, Forbes is an authoritative source and their experts are as good as any. Maybe Kraków is considered to be great already £odz.

Maybe compared to the other places on that list...but that is not saying much.

Numbers 1,2,6 and 10 are huge Chinese cities...have any of you been to China? The quality of life there is horrible. The air is horrid, infrastructure is not well built...most cities on that list are business and labor hubs but to say quality of life is high in any of them for the average person is ridiculous.

Wipe the quality of life rating off the list and it makes more sense. And to put Warsaw (as bad as it is) under 3 Chinese cities is a joke...even the richest Chinese city is filthy and smelly and makes Poland look like paradise.

True enough gtd. I've never been but I've heard countless accounts. Poland isn't the model of clean either but it is moving more in that direction. It all boils down to what u regard as 'great'

Well they should be more clear in their meaning...next big labor and economic hubs? Sure I can get that. But those places are never nice to live in and do not have high qualities of life for most people.

I think Poland is dirty in the cities compared to a lot of places...but what they do NOT have is air pollution. I would say the air in Warsaw is of fine quality. There is not a city in China that isn't covered in it. Makes you want to vomit just breathing sometimes.

Silesia is a highly industrial area and there is definitely air pollution here but not on a large scale.

But Krakow isn't a major finance centre. The survey looked at financial services and things like investor protection, derivatives trading etc.

Another reason I edit sausage ;) People post while you are typing.

Ah...yeah I have not spent much time in that region (silesia). Personally I think air quality is one of the most obvious signs of life quality in a city environment. If it is covered in pollution the odds are the other life comforts are low as well. Just look at how Beijing scrambled to reduce pollution for the Olympics (and they failed miserably) and they even tried to say it was just 'fog'.

In my opinion Warsaw is pretty filthy for a city. The streets are not cleaned well, lots of rubbish around, buses, trams and metros are filthy (except the fancy new ones). Now New York and LA are just as bad for example...so it is not an anti Poland statement. But there are cities that are more clean overall. I will refrain from listing those I think are to avoid the arguments.

good point

Yes, I have. To be honest, Shanghai is both the cleanest and the dirtiest place that I have ever visited. If we take public toilets as an example, there were some that were do modern that I didn't even need to touch the doors because they were mtion sensitive (I'm sure there's a gag in there somewhere LOL!!) and I could have eaten my dinner off the floor... then there were some that I feel quite queasey just thinking about.

Forbes sucks! Notice how they rank Chile and Mexico city higher, and even some industrial Chinese town. I've been to Mexico City :-(, trust me, Warsaw is a 1000x times better.