London is a happy city, but not the happiest city, according to new research

The headline news is that London is the 31st happiest city in the world, which sounds about right. The nation’s capital, the beating heart of the UK’s culture, economy and population, is happy enough, but not too happy. About a 'Zoom meeting at work got cancelled at the last minute’ level of happy. We got 842 points, which sounds like a lot, but is fewer than 30 other cities. It is also more than 170 other cities. Good, but not great. B+.

The ranking comes from the suspiciously named Institute for Quality of Life, which releases its Happy City Index (HCI) each year. London has at least had the decency to improve on its performance from last year, moving up two places. It is also the happiest city in the UK, which must be some kind of mistake, as I’m always told by those living in other UK cities how much better they are than London. ‘Oh you must come live in Bristol, we have a barge that sells only cider’. Yeah, sure, whatever, enjoy 103rd place, residents of ‘Bristol’.

A pertinent question might be: how do our friends at the Institute for Quality of Life decide whomst is happy and whomst is not? They say that ‘it is not fair to establish a single city as the leader’ (even though that is what they have done. It’s Copenhagen), so ranks are also in bands, with 1-31 considered ‘Gold’, 32-100 ‘Silver’, and the remaining rat-infested metropolises of misery in ‘Bronze’.

Each city is scored on categories such as citizens, governance, environment, economy, health, and mobility. London, the happiest city in the UK but, crucially, not the world, ranks very highly in ‘governance’, which I am sure will be a surprise to all of us living here, and not so highly in ‘health’, which will be a surprise to nobody. If you would really like to get into the bones of the methodology, you can do so here.

As discussed, the Danes are the happiest bunch around, with Copenhagen in first place and Aarhus in fourth. Zurich is in second spot, Singapore third, and Antwerp fifth. Paris is, regrettably, 13th.

But all is not lost, because in another poll that I have found, London is named the world’s most romantic city. Victory. The poll was conducted by the masters of statistics and sexy swimwear at Pour Moi, who ‘crunched the data’ to create an indexed report that looks at three things: the number of times reviewers described the locations as ‘romantic’, the number of ‘things to do for couples’ listed in each city and the number of Instagram posts with the hashtag #datenight[city]. Masterful stuff.

But London wins, so we will take it. ‘Whether you’re wandering hand-in-hand along the South Bank, catching the sunset from the top of Primrose Hill, or sharing a bottle of wine in a cosy pub, romance is never far away,’ say our friends at Pour Moi, and we heartily agree. Where is Paris? It is in ninth. Desolé.

Living, loving, (sometimes) laughing. London.