The World’s Healthiest Cities

So how do you decide what a healthy city is?  Usually, like BBC Travel, you use a few figures to find out such as the pervasiveness and ease of use of the mass transit system, access to greenery, and available healthcare.

Singapore ranks in the healthiest cities to live in.  With a low infant mortality rate, high life expectancy, and one of the best healthcare systems in the world, Singapore is certainly one of the best cities in which to live.  With strict anti-littering and even anti-spitting laws, Singapore runs a tight ship.  There are numerous gardens and parks as well as a mass transit system that carries 2 million people to and from work each day.  Singapore also has focused on being a biker-friendly city as well as promoting a good balance between work and recreation in daily activities.

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Tokyo is rated the number 2 healthiest city by the Guardian in 2012.  The greenhouse emissions in Tokyo are significantly lower than in most Asian cities, and the public transportation is legendary.  In addition to the implementation of universal health insurance in 1961, strong family and communal ties keep the life expectancy very high at over 84 years old.

Perth is Australia’s and one of the world’s healthiest cities.  According to women’s health, Perth is near the best city for healthy eating, mental wellbeing, life satisfaction, and mental health.  Perth is near plenty of beautiful Indian Ocean Beaches and actively supports outdoor activity.  There are bike shelters at many of the train stations to allow people to bike to the Transperth, Perth’s wonderful public transit system.

Traveling in the New Generation

According to The Atlantic, the millennial generation, defined as people between the ages of 16 and 34, has a insatiable hunger for travel when compared with older generations.  The Boston Consulting group held a study that found millennials to be more interested in travel than other generations by almost 23%.  About 20% of all travelers, according to the United Nations, are people, which means that there are about 40 million young travelers.  Since 2007, there has been an increase in tourism revenue by almost 30%.

This generation is also changing the standards of travel.  Rather than a quick enjoyable vacation, most young travelers are leaving on longer trips trying to have more meaningful experiences.  These people are, more often than not, traveling to some remote location rather than an established tourism hub.

With the advent of travel planners and tools, young people are finding that long-term travel is cheaper than they previously expected.  Rather than saving up for an uncertain trip in an uncertain future, people are starting to jump for the chance to travel rather than wait.

A huge factor in this change of attitude towards waiting for a more prudent time to take a trip is that confidence in future stability is at a low for recent years.  In 1983, 88% of private-sector workers had benefit coverage for retirement.  Now, it is under 33%.

The companies offering pensions has fallen by 80%.  Americans are no longer confident that they will receive financial support as they age.  90% of miimgresllennials believe that Social Security benefits will be reduced when they are of the age to collect, while over 50% of those people don’t believe Social Security will exist at all.

The job market for millenials has also been especially bad.  Many who have had trouble finding jobs decide to travel in order to take a break and see what extra-local possibilities they may have.

Travel has become an outlet of fulfillment for much of today’s youth.  Rather than stick with a job they hate, or continue searching fruitlessly for one, millenials have started to take long-term trips of fulfillment.