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It’s not just a city - it’s a hub of happiness waiting to be explored. Christchurch has been recently crowned New Zealand’s happiest city by the 2024 Happy City Index, an annual assessment conducted by the London-based Institute for Quality of Life. The Garden City emerged as the sole New Zealand city in the Top 37 2024 Happy City Index, earning a “gold” category ranking at 32nd place.

Read more: I visited Christchurch for the first time in 20 years - should I have bothered? The 2024 Happy City Index by the Quality of Life institute is a prestigious index that evaluates living standards across the globe, focusing on cities that prioritise happiness and wellbeing. This year, the index took into account several key factors: education, inclusive policies, economic vitality, mobility, environmental protection, access to green areas, and innovation. Denmark’s “city of smiles”, Aarhus, stayed true to its name and claimed the top spot on the list, only after Switzerland’s Zurich and Germany’s Berlin.



While the top cities are mostly in Europe, three New Zealand cities appear on the list: Christchurch, which ranked 32nd globally, and Wellington and Auckland on 50th and 72nd, respectively. A popular Christchurch Reddit thread was filled with Christchurch locals sharing their sentiments on the topic. One user said, “I’d agree with that.

Having lived in Wellington for three times as long as I have been here, a few months in Sydney and a few months in Auckland. It�.

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