100 Greatest Places in the World

Quite often you come across these 100 best places to live in, 100 best places to retire in, 100 best places to visit etc kind of lists on the internet.  Often they are absolute nonsense and put together by some company or organisation that has ulterior motives (e.g. a real estate company or something).  However, recently TIME magazine released a list of the 100 Greatest Places in the World.  TIME magazine is a reputable source, and indeed one that I used to subscribe to.  So imagine my surprise when they included Seattle in the list of 100 Greatest Places in the World.  I mean Seattle is perfectly fine, and I've lived in Greater Seattle for many years now, but is it really one of the 100 greatest places in the world?  No.  Not even close - I doubt it's even one of the 1000 greatest places in the world.  It's not even the greatest place I've ever lived in in the US (which would be San Diego).  I can think of many cities, many metros, many natural wonders, many landscapes and environments that are a lot "greater" than Seattle.  So perhaps my decision to stop reading TIME was a wise one, if these are the kind of bizarre editorial decisions they are making.  I had a quick look on their website, and this is what they said about Seattle:

In 1962, Seattle’s Space Needle debuted at the World’s Fair as a vision of the future. Some 60 years later, the city is wowing visitors with the groundbreaking Climate Pledge Arena. This $1 billion project will be the world’s first carbon-zero arena and will play host to the Kraken, a brand-new NHL team hitting the ice in the 2021–22 season—ice that will be made of collected rainwater. The city also has a dynamic restaurant scene, including the first fixed location from Dat Creole Soul, a popular food-truck business from chef Hampton Isom that will serve gumbo, jalapeño hush puppies and fried catfish. For something else old that’s new again, reserve a table at Canlis, a 70-year-old restaurant that just named Aisha Ibrahim as its first female executive chef.

       

What a load of guff - and hardly the criteria to select it as one of the greatest places in the world (a new arena and a couple of restaurants).  Unbelievable.