I'm a south Londoner and proud of it, much to the chagrin of the locl yokels down here in "Daaarset" and have travelled the world with HM Forces and never found a city close to London's vibrancy, its diversity and even its oddity and quirkiness.

From Del Boy to the London Underground, London has it sorted in my view, like all cities it has its bad points but they are far far outweighed by London's good points and history.

To think we ruled the world from there (or so it would seem)

I am slowly making my way back "home", I leave "Deliverance" country here in the new year to Gosport and maybe in a few years I will have the money ready to buy my daughter and I a place back in the smoke.

I took a trip to London in November of 1996, part business, part touring.

I was greatly impressed with the sense of power that the city exuded, definitely like high tension electricity, but in a good way.

I especially appreciated the devotion and seriousness that people showed toward the veteran war dead, and my fellow travelers and I wore our poppies with a sense of sharing and community with our hosts, and reverence for the soldiers of both our nations.

I also noticed some great vantage points for photography and intend to make a return trip when I can to savor the city again. I go to New York several times a year, and it has nothing over London as a world leading city.

Sue MacGregor, writer and broadcaster

"It is a fantastic city if you have money to spend but I wouldn't want to be poor in London. But it's second to none for theatre and music. There always seems to be serious music on – you could go to something different every night of the week."

Unlike, err, Paris and New York? "second to none" is about right.

When you are in London, avoid stepping on the poor. It's such a fun place!

I'm sorry, my British friends, but the capital city of the world is New York City. The Big Apple has everything London has, plus more. Also, the NY Stock Exchange is the center of the economic universe. If the Nasdaq or Dow Jones has a bad day, every other stock exchange on Earth (including the FTSE) feel the pain the next day. This is not true for the London Stock Exchange. Finally, the UN Headquarters are in NYC. Just about anyone outside of the UK would agree with this assessment.

ho ho ho set that IQ on minus30, as the holiday season clunks into view good to see the indy knocking out some smug, feel good journalism to accompany the turkey bones to the dump. usually the indy has such a good cover story so nice to see you plumping for 10 outta 10 all round vapid for yr pre-xmas issue.

While I can appreciate the desire to rank cities by a set of criteria. I'm always amazed when they say you can hear 300 languages spoken on the street about any city. This has been the norm in Chicago and most major American cities for about the last 50 to 100 years, Why is this such a special characteristic. Isn't this the norm now. Never the less, Good for London.

Hmm..aren't the criteria - number of times the place has hosted the two-week long Olympics, for Pete's sake! - market cap etc just a little bit self-serving? If the functionality of the airports was a criterion, London would be in the same band as Lusaka.
For population ethnic diversity, Australia is the world's number 1, according to the OECD anyway, with 25% of the workforce born outside Australia.
Also, London is dirty, shabby, dysfunctional, crime-ridden and full of oligarchs and drunkards. Yuk. Third World, with crap weather.

I was born in London and remained there till age 24. I've now lived 33 years in a small city an hour from London. London is fine for a day-visit but actually living/working there requires the mentality of a true martyr. It's become a city for the very rich and the very poor......or for those who've lived there for at least 30 years. Everyone else HAS to leave as soon as they want to start a family or they discover that the things which actually make life worth living are far more readily available elsewhere: time, space, value, peace, air, work/home balance, authenticity. What is the point of all that London diversity, choice and vibrancy when you're too knackered, skint, stressed and time-robbed to partake?

London..a wonderful city no doubt,very multicultural and an international economic powerhouse, however wouldn't really like to live there Sydney Paris Barcelona Munich to name a few would all seem preferrable in terms of quality of living
Anyway Dublin should get another point...Unesco should recognise the best pubs in the world!!

This is completely, utterly, unbelievably, astoundingly asisine. All those criteria and calibrations for what? A meaningless "league table" and a bombastic front page. Is there some internal plot to sabotage the Independent as a serious newspaper? This is a a joke.

I live, work and for my sins bring up a child in London. It is without doubt a great city, but for Simon (I have a very nervous dispassion) Caldwell, to rank it as number one is ridicules. This year alone 25 teenagers have died from gang related knife crime – sadly it seems to be afro-Caribbean rival gangs – harmony I don’t think. OAP’s are mugged for their pension by youths who 9 times out of ten are from the same community and ASBO’s (a criminal conviction) are seen as a medal.

All this said I do love the place, but it has to have a good look at itself to even be considered for an overall award (made up or not) like this.

London, I think we can agree, is one of the worlds great cities and no more than that/ There are roughly 10 cities in the world that can be considered great for varying reasons – London is only one of them

I live in Paris, and I have to stress some points.
1) in terms of ethnic diversity, Paris is far ahead of london, there is in all the parisian aglomeration (ile-de-france) nearly 4 million non-european population, there is very important french-born italian community, which reaches above 2 million people, and a portuguese and french-born portuguese community which reaches 1 million. This makes a 7 million non french-ethnic population. I am sure that london cannot compete with this statistic.

2) it is no very sensible to compare Paris (which is a city center in terms of british aproach on agglomeration) whith london (which is a city center plus itssuburbs). just a few statistics for you to understand why paris is ahead. The density of the paris (city-center) is 20 169 inhab / km² the surface of paris is 105,4 km². The density of london is 4761 inhab/km² in a surface of 1579 km².

Basically, what is called london has a surface 10 times bigger than what is called paris. But what is called paris, is just the city center of the agglomeration, and what is called london, is the city center plus the subburbs. If we include the adjacent suburbs of paris (what is called the ile-de-france) in the comparison then the parisian population reaches 12 million people, and its density 957 hab/km² and its surface is 12 011 km². This is in turn 10 times bigger than london, but this is the real extent of the parisian agglomeration. And should have been included in the ranking.

If we take into account, the 7 million non-ethnic french who live in the parisian-agglomeration (ile-de-france) and also the 12 million population. Then paris (or greater paris) is far ahead of london (or greater london if you prefer). SO the results that we see here have been adapted in order to put london first...

London is a scummy hole infested by the worst financial parasites on the face of the planet. Livingstone calls it the world's leading financial centre, it is in fact the world's leading money laundering centre. For every pound that goes out from UK as aid a tenner comes back very often siphoned off from poor countries to be laundered through the City and the various off-shore nooks and cranies.

This is what Babylon's "wealth" amounts to. During the English civil war soldiers sang "Babylon is fallen to rise no more".

The credit crunch has found these parasites out, and Babylon will fall again.

Totally agree, London is the World Capital. The UK has become two countries with two economies. It would be interesting to see how the UK ranked ex-London.

Sorry, but I see much of London as one vast public refuse tip. What city on the Continent is mired in so much rubbish? The public transport system is a complete joke - and the most expensive in Europe. Shop prices are sky high, Londoners are a stressed out race, their lifestyle hectic and unforgiving, the street crime awful. I really cannot see what London has got to offer except train stations from which to escape, thank God.

Anyone care to defend the indefensible? This is where the money comes from. This and invading Iraq to keep the petro-dollars slushing in:

"Exactly 10 times the $100bn spent on aid and debt write-offs by rich countries is siphoned out of developing countries, with corporations responsible for 60 per cent of that figure through a web of trusts, nominee accounts and the flagrant mispricing of goods to escape tax.

Evidence is emerging of how City financiers are using new techniques on behalf of corporations and the super-rich through the creation of protected cell companies and sham offshore trusts.......

....Raymond Baker, director of Global Financial Integrity and an expert on money laundering, said: 'For the first time in 200 years we have an integrated global structure in the Square Mile and Manhattan whose basic purpose is to shift money from the poor to the rich.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2115469,00.html

The M25 is the biggest toilet seat in the world.
Only this daft 'world embracing' newspaper would print such a front page.
Sorry, but people from the rest of the country view it as a multi cultural hell hole,and a pit of greed.
It will be a charnel house one day-Londoners are welcome to it.

You Omitted the word "Knife" from the Title.

Yes, Benjamin's comment sums it up. It is unfortunate that anyone should conflate and confuse a great city to do financial transactions in with a great city, full stop.

I was born in Perivale and grew up around Greater London, always proud to be a cockney even though there have been many testing times over the years. However, following the murder of Charles De Menezes by London police and the subsequent cover-up, I finally relinquished my London pride. In fact, two Blairs have made me ashamed of my country and hometown respectively.

I love the convergence of the Far Right's distrust of the banks and fiat money with the Far Left's rants about capitalism. Just why would it make any difference whether oil was priced in dollars or not? Dollars are the value they are because people trust them and so demand them. Whether the trivial amount of oil bought and sold is traded in dollars is irrelevant. Nor can Americans simply print dollars without running up massive inflation which will undermine that trust. There is just no reason to believe the Iraq War was about anything other than what the massive amount of evidence points to - the War on Terror.

I did not condone theft anywhere - not that you have even tried to prove these dollars are the result of theft of course. Singapore and the Gulf States are investing in the West at the moment and their money is not stolen is it?

If we don't like foreigners owning things, it is up to us to save more. I don't think that is rocket science. I am all for encouraging more people to save more for their retirements and so on. Are you?

We still make things. Wherever the Unions don't control the industries any more.

By all accounts from this boast one can only conclude that London will produce the best Olympics ever?.

"There is just no reason to believe the Iraq War was about anything other than what the massive amount of evidence points to - the War on Terror."

That would be George Bush and yourself who believe that, Bernard - nobody else

"I did not condone theft anywhere - not that you have even tried to prove these dollars are the result of theft of course."

From the Observer link I provided. You think these funds are invested in tax havens for the benefit of 3rd world countries?

"Exactly 10 times the $100bn spent on aid and debt write-offs by rich countries is siphoned out of developing countries, with corporations responsible for 60 per cent of that figure through a web of trusts, nominee accounts and the flagrant mispricing of goods to escape tax."

"If we don't like foreigners owning things, it is up to us to save more. I don't think that is rocket science. I am all for encouraging more people to save more for their retirements and so on. Are you?

"We still make things. Wherever the Unions don't control the industries any more."

This is just the usual liberal economic mantra. It is fast approaching the end of the road - the current account deficit is now running at a staggering 5.7% of GDP.

London used to have a wide range of manufacturing industry - now it is dangerously dependent upon financial speculation, money-lending, money-changing, money-laundering. But the reckoning draws nigh as the spivs(it was good to see Vince Cable talk of "City spivs" the other day) are credit crunched.

'kinhell! Who gave London that spurious rating - travel writers who stay in luxury hotels? Ive lived in London twice, have vacationed there many times. But NO more! Why? The oppressive cellphone idiot-conversations, the horrific traffic, the oft-crammed metro-carriages, the devastating Motown or Rap music in pubs, the swiftly-served and miniscule meals in eating-places where the underline is 'eat quick, get out of here!', the rudeness and piss-orf attitudes. etc. Heavens, I recall a London where people could actually convserse in pubs and cars sometimes stopped to allow pedestrians to cross the street, drivers often giving a wave or the V-for-Victory sign. Now its the Up-You sign!

I love London. It has the best flying pigs you'll see anywhere in the world.