Yet over the last few weeks, as one Israeli official who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the media, told me, the number of missiles that Hamas launched at Israel has reached the "level of rocket fire that is not livable". The rate of fire has increased to an average of one rocket launched every four minutes, around the clock.
Rank: 1.8 coke-fuelled orgies out of 5. Meanwhile in Montreal … the listings actually boast livable space with reasonable rates in prime neighbourhoods where the plaster isn't falling from the ceiling and not every room looks like a mortuary.
Located at the southern tip of Cayuga Lake, the longest of the 11 Finger Lakes, Ithaca is consistently rated among the most livable cities in the United States.
In fact Watts was a model of Great Society progress, rich in public services; a study by the National Urban League had rated it the most livable black neighborhood in the country.
It is consistently rated one of North America's most livable cities, and, despite the vagaries of a highly volatile information-technology economy, its fortunes seem to be ever on the rise.
Despite Seattle's enormous growth, it still maintains a high level of social and public services, excellent schools, and abundant parks and greenbelts, which have earned it the sobriquet "the Emerald City". It is consistently rated one of North America's most livable cities, and, despite the vagaries of a highly volatile information-technology economy, its fortunes seem to be ever on the rise.
Over the next 15 years, a half-dozen books and magazines, including Harper's and Money, rated Seattle as the nation's most livable city.
Words and deeds can do that even better: in 1985, the Rand-McNally "Places Rated Almanac" declared Pittsburgh (wonder of wonders) the most livable city in America.
But the primary goal is promotion of an awareness of an issue that is growing at an exponential rate and tests the humanity that is necessary to sustain a livable world.
Mentions Connecticut Magazine's annual survey of towns with populations under 5,000, which rated Norfolk, a Berkshires village in northern Litchfield County, the most livable in the state.
