Yippie, my city of Hobart has come second in the Condé Nast Traveler's Readers' Choice Awards for the friendliest city in the world. Hobart had a reader rating of 95.4 and was beaten by Florianopolis, Brazil which had a reader rating of 95.8. The highest rated US city was Charleston, South Carolina in 5th place with a rating of 91.5. The unfriendliest city in the world was deemed to be Newark, New Jersey with a reader rating of 13.4 The friendlest/unfriendliest cities in the world are listed here and the friendliest/unfriendliest cities in the USA are listed here Do you agree or disagree with the lists?
Unfriendliest city I have ever been to? No contest: Philadelphia. Friendliest? That's a toughie. Boston, Toronto, Kansas City and Minneapolis tend to spring to mind.
I'm glad Austin made the top 10; it is definitely a friendly place, probably THE friendliest place in the entire state. I found Vegas to be pretty damned unfriendly. People were rude as hell. I guess they're only nice if you're spending lots of money.
My city is pretty friendly. Everyone is a transplant from out of state that doesn't know anyone locally.
Friends of mine tried to get me to move there, as a gay guy I laughed at them. Sure Austin is probably awesome, but I could never live in Texas. Also all of upstate NY is incredibly dull and mean. Rochester NY I love, in the summer, but the people there are some of the worst people you will ever meet and I live in Massachusetts and we are known as Massholes. The city is really cheap to live in so it's full of rich asshole white brats. They treat everyone less than them, more so if you are not white. So then all the others, mainly blacks and Asians, don't bother talking to the white people because they just think that they are all rich assholes. It's a mess.
I found the people in LA (city and county, generally) to be reasonably friendly, competent waitstaff in restaurants, and quite good at not running me over while I crossed the street, so... maybe I just have odd standards? The only other city on that list that I've been to (wow, my life is boring) is New Haven, where I went to school. I can't defend it. I regularly cuss people out in the IKEA parking lot, or on 95 or whatever. So, I'm part of the problem I guess.
Don't bother coming to Vancouver B.C. as we're reasonably skeptical / withdrawn / suspicious of people from all the Meth-heads around here. Especially the homeless / mentally ill still getting on the skytrain, walking up & down each of the cars & hitting everyone up for change for food or whatever. Oh, and the multiple panhandlers asking for money for booze, weed, & crisply-dressed asian female solicitors asking for sponsorship money for overseas causes around every station on sunnier days. In addition to the a**hole credit card application shills that don't get the idea of staying the frig out of everyone's way on the stairs.
As a general rule, Italian cities aren't particularly friendly. On the other hand, they are quite "friendly", if you know what I mean.
I think Boston is surprisingly friendly. By that I mean that we don't strike up conversations on the subway and we're big into personal space. But we're also a tourist town; I often see people stop to ask puzzled-looking tourists with (almost always outdated) maps, "Whatcha lookin' fah? (translation: Hey, what are you looking for on that probably outdated map, and can I help you find how to get there?)" I've done it myself, and I'm not friendly at all.
I mostly agree with the list (at least as far as the places I've been to). Savannah, GA (and Atlanta as well as Augusta) are wonderful places. Albany, NY is a drug infested shit hole. The state should just burn it to the ground. Newark truly earns its number 1 spot on unfriendliest cities, though I would argue it shares a lot in common with neighboring NYC. It just lacks the rich douches that NYC has.
Glad Edinburgh made it on to the friendly list. As for the friendliest city I've personally been to - Dublin, definitely. Loved it. The unfriendliest - Paris. I had a terrible time there. The amount of rudeness was surprising.
By a significant margin the friendliest place I've ever visited was Luxemburg, but I suppose it can't be on a list like that due to being quite small and not much of a tourist attraction.