liveability can differ". This is a problem, as one does not have to stretch the imagination too far to recognise that life in the world's most liveable city is not all that it is cracked up to be. For the un- and under-employed, many renters, pensioners, new immigrants, the disabled and relatively well-educated "creatives" living in the precarious "knowledge economy" on a contract-to-contract basis, such proclamations ring hollow. What the rankings offer is essentially a technical fix for an intuitive and existential set of questions that require real community debate. Categorising the different dimensions of liveability into a ranking system begs the question of what should a city focus on to ensure that the quality of life which its residents share is maintained and improved. In short, the liveability rankings are an exercise in technocratic over-reach, glossing over the complicated, shared experiences of what they purport to monitor: "liveability" and, increasingly, "sustainability". The EIU and Mercer indices say little about issues that may sit beyond their scope, such as economic distribution, social inclusion, the ecological footprint, working conditions, planning for the future or a range of other legitimate criteria. The indices create conditions for a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, one that sets its own standards of success while casting failure simply as failing to live up to those measures. The indices do not necessarily indicate whether a highly ranked liveable or sustainable city is providing anything beyond what lay within the unilaterally determined list of indicators -- a list generally