Melbourne: The World's Best City — But Is It Really?

Collins street Melbourne

By now, you've probably seen the headlines. Melbourne has just been named the world's best city by Time Out — jumping three places to claim the number one spot, the first time an Australian city has ever topped the list. I'll be honest, I was immensely proud. I've always felt Melbourne gets a little overlooked in favour of her northern neighbour, who is glitzy and knows how to demand attention. But Melbourne has always been the warmer, friendlier city — and it turns out the world is starting to notice.

As someone who helps people relocate to Melbourne every day, I've been watching the reaction with a mix of pride and something a little more complicated. Because I see this city through a very particular lens — not just as a local, but through the eyes of people arriving here for the first time, often mid-life, mid-career, and mid-stress.

And if you want to understand Melbourne, start with the food. Not just the food itself, but the passion behind it. The authentic Vietnamese restaurants tucked into Richmond and Footscray that have been feeding this city for decades. The comic yet entirely serious ambition of Sooshi Mango's to reignite Lygon Street as Melbourne's Italian heartbeat — the way it was in the 80s and 90s, when it felt like the centre of the world. The hidden gems buried in the arcades and laneways of the CBD, including my personal favourite at Central Place. South Melbourne Market and Queen Vic for those who treat a Saturday morning shop as something close to a religious experience. It's our collective, unashamed passion for food that warms my heart the most about this city.

And then there's the energy. I'll confess — I'm not someone who goes to the Grand Prix or the tennis. But I don't need to. There is something uniquely Melbourne about the way this city shows up for sport. The AFL alone has a gravitational pull unlike anything I've experienced elsewhere. Even as someone who doesn't attend sporting events, I find myself completely swept up in the wave — the pride, the noise, the collective breath of a city that cares deeply and isn't embarrassed about it.

A Local's Love Letter (Honest Edition)

I have been in love with this city for most of my life. I've watched her change and grow, and to me she has always been an elegant lady in couture clothing — a little eccentric, always considered, never quite like anywhere else.

And perhaps nothing captures that elegance more than her architecture. I have always been romantically in love with Melbourne's buildings — the ornate facades, the grand Victorian terraces, the covered arcades like the Royal Arcade that feel like they belong to another century entirely. There is something about walking through this city, from the wide leafy streets of North Melbourne through to the quiet grace of East Melbourne, that stirs a nostalgia for a time I never lived but can somehow feel. The Paris End of Collins Street does this to me every time — it is unapologetically romantic, a little European, and entirely Melbourne. These buildings carry the memory of ancestors I never met, of lives lived in a city that was already beautiful long before I arrived. They are the bones beneath the couture, and they remind me that Melbourne's elegance is not accidental. It was built, stone by stone, with intention.

But over the years, I forgot. The dark days of COVID made her shine a little duller. It made me, and my fellow Melburnians, lose our shine too. Did it make us less adventurous? Maybe. Did it leave some of our adorable villages a little tatty around the edges? Yes — sadly, yes. But we are a proud tribe. We love our city — all her sparkling bits and all her tattiness.

On the morning Time Out announced Melbourne as the winner, I needed to venture into town for an early meeting. Normally, I would catch the train, but this time I chose to take the tram down St Kilda Road and walk in from the Arts Centre. And somewhere along that walk — past an avenue of European plane trees, with a sparkling sun catching the surface of our majestic, proud river — I was overcome with love for her beauty again. Not sparkling harbour, not opera house. Just Melbourne, doing what Melbourne does quietly and without fuss.

But here's the honest part — and I think it's worth saying. Melbourne can be a hard city to land in. The rental market is tight, and finding the right home in the right neighbourhood takes time and local knowledge that most newcomers simply don't have yet. The city rewards exploration, but that requires a certain emotional bandwidth that isn't always available when you've just uprooted your life. And four seasons in one day is charming as a slogan, less charming when you're trying to figure out what to pack for school drop-off.

What I've come to believe, after years of helping people settle here, is that Melbourne is a city that opens up gradually. It takes a few weekends of wandering, a favourite café, a neighbourhood that starts to feel familiar. It doesn't always give itself up immediately — but when it does, it tends to be for good.

So is Melbourne the world's best city? The numbers say yes. The laneways say yes. And for most of the people we've helped call it home — eventually, so do they.