In this, our big summer issue, we refute the doomsayers edging us ever closer to some unspoken after-dark curfew and open up a conversation about the distinct benefits to be enjoyed by those neighbourhoods that aren't afraid to stay up late.
Before you take a closer look at the make-up of our tenth annual Quality of Life Survey, examine the final rankings (and, of course, let us know if you dispute them).
Top 25 liveable cities
In this year's Quality of Life survey we've gone beyond the sun to assess cities not just by their daytime attributes but by their nightly traits too. Read on to get the measure of our nocturnal metrics and find out where your city ranks.
It's all very well claiming to be a city that never sleeps but does that actually result in wide-awake venues and services that those burning the midnight oil can access? We visit London, Sydney and Buenos Aires to find out.
Monocle mascot Monochan is the ultimate night owl. Join him as he flies around the world to bring us wisdoms garnered from a life in the skies, from developing night-time infrastructure to tips on the best bars. It'll be a hoot.
Grand plans
Whether hosting the Olympics or overhauling a public-transport system, running a city is a daunting task. So who would take it on? We meet seven mayors willing to bear the weight of a city upon their shoulders.
The German city that is a favourite among twilight types and how e-bikes will help to ease traffic in Belgium.
An entertaining neighbourhood in Alabama and transport news from Los Angeles.
Learn a few moves from China's "dancing grannies" and find out how the volume is being turned down on Hong Kong's tramcars.
Off-grid solar energy in Africa and new housing for low-income families in Saudi Arabia.
How the Gold Coast is preparing for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Plus: Tasmania's tourism boom.
Willing and able
Volunteers can have an incredibly positive impact on their communities, as well as helping to keep their fellow citizens out of harm's way. We meet the firefighters in Tokyo, coastguards in Stockholm and medical emergency workers in Jerusalem who provide their enthusiastic and expert services for the common good.
✕5 Essays
Our wise contributors unravel the riddles at the heart of our cities: what makes them tick, how they can work better and what nocturnal joys lie within.
Grass is greener
Portugal's capital is not known as a green city but a bold redevelopment is turning former wastelands into spectacular parks with cycle lanes. We speak to the city's ambitious environment and energy councillor about his vision to link up Lisbon's greenery.
Nightlife expo
We discover what goes down after sunset in Thessaloniki, Tokyo and Beirut.
Expo: Neighbourhoods
Three busy cities that wouldn't be the same without serene pockets of peace and quiet.
The late show
Entrepreneurial audacity has transformed a once desolate plot into a peerless late-night hive. Monocle meets Montréal's marvels of change and other business night owls pitching up after dark.
The merging of retail and residential can have a tremendously positive effect on a community. We visit Denmark and Japan to marvel at the diversity of multitasking buildings that owe their success to their synergy.
Galloping majors
Two men, disillusioned by the fashion industry's perennial pursuit of cheap production, wanted to create a denim company with an emphasis on craftsmanship and community. Monocle visits the happy outcome: Blackhorse Lane Ateliers.
Montréal brings the buzz, Italy wants more writers and other business news.
Madrid: beat goes on
Late-night revelry is a way of life for Madrileños and the good times have only improved with a city council committed to carousing. Monocle gets into the groove.
Artist studios: changing spaces
All cities love the artistic vibe but often destroy it with high rents, so the affordability of artists' studios is a good judge of cultural quality of life – it's even a new judging metric for this year's survey. With that in mind, we visit three cities where vibrant life meet cheap space to forge creative success.
Never faltering
Thanks to its superlative journalism and resolute business model, city magazine 'Falter' has remained steadfast in an unsteady publishing landscape. We visit the offices of one of Vienna's most trusted voices.
Dips at dusk
Few things are more tranquil than a long and languorous swim – and slip into the water come nightfall and it's more soothing still. We visit Iceland, Australia and France to take a few starlit dips in some of the world's finest pools.
Transport design: full steam ahead
Japan's long-distance trains are entering a new era of luxury and innovation. Monocle visits the industrial and interior designers who are redefining train travel.
Podium finish
Rome's Olympic Village is now a modernist urban marvel – and a winning place to live.
Our favourite city design details, from hanging lamps in Copenhagen to neon signs in Warsaw.
The high life
The 1958-built Bretagne Building, once the tallest in São Paulo's upmarket Higienópolis neighbourhood, has aged gracefully. It is loved for its design but, arguably, its biggest success is the sense of community enjoyed by residents.
Here comes the sun thanks to our choice selection of sunglasses, shirts and swimshorts.
Push the boat out
As the sun begins to shine on the port city of Genoa its well-dressed guests come out in force. Grab a wide-brimmed hat and join the sun-kissed crew on the curving waterfront or head into town for a sundowner in a crisp white shirt.
Eat, don't sleep
A culinary tour of stalls, stop-ins and restaurants best enjoyed during the small hours.
Wurst of times
Forget the modish, fly-by-night food truck business or setting up a drab diner: instead we're taking a stand (literally). Here's to our ideal – if for now imagined – take on a Viennese classic. Welcome to Monocle's perfect late-night wiener stand.
Successful streets should have a balance of daytime bustle and night-time buzz. We line up the ones that we think work best – and sample their delights, of course.
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson makes art for a more thoughtful world – and his in-studio kitchen feels much the same about food.
A recent visit to Vancouver got editor in chief Tyler Brûlé thinking all the more about quality of life. Read on for his thoughts on everything in the Canadian city, from urban design to public toilets – and a run-in with an inquisitive seal.
Transport design / Japan
Kenji Hall
For many years Japan's train industry has been in hot pursuit of speed and efficiency – but a rethink is now under way. Japanese railway operators have been investing eye-watering sums in trains that are designed for long, immersing journeys rather than hurtling ever more people over greater distances in the shortest possible time.
This new generation comes with dining cars, intricate design and even art shows. They downplay utility: think armchairs and sofas instead of tight rows of reclinable seats; lampshades, not fluorescent bulbs; wood and lacquer over modular plastic. And as their whistle-stop tours bring attention to the culture, craftsmanship and terroir of far-flung regions, these trains could become central to the small towns that had been left behind in Japan's sprint towards a hi-tech future.
Genbi Shinkansen
Art train
The idea for an art train started as a question about tourism. Railway operator JR East knew that travellers had been flocking to weekend leisure trains. Could it do something to attract more visitors to Niigata prefecture in northern Japan? "We thought a café train was worth looking into but felt it should be linked to a cultural event. We chose Niigata's Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale," says JR East's Soichi Tanaka, who headed the project. The Genbi Shinkansen launched in April as a moving gallery with works by seven artists.
This is not a new train: JR East had a six-car Shinkansen that was being phased out but was good for a few more years of service. Instead of scrapping it the company called on design firm Transit General Office for help with a ¥500m (€4m) makeover.
Now all but two dozen of the seats are gone; instead low lounge chairs line up to face the art on the opposite wall. The café has handmade wooden floors and bent plywood chairs. The menu of Niigata-produced products includes Tsubame Coffee, Cave d'Occi wines and biscuits that are made with Sado Island butter.
The train reaches speeds of 210km/h during its 50-minute trip between Niigata and Echigo-Yuzawa stations; after three months of catering to tour groups, JR East will run it on a regular schedule. "It will be open to anyone travelling around Niigata for the same price as a standard Shinkansen ticket," says Tanaka.
Eiji Mitooka
Train designer
Eiji Mitooka's design for the Seven Stars in Kyushu – a ¥3bn (€25m) sleeper train that debuted to wide acclaim in western Japan in 2013 – pays tribute to the Pullman carriages of the Orient Express. But when the 68-year-old (pictured) presented his ideas to Kyushu Railway (JR Kyushu) he didn't rely on archive photos of the Paris-Istanbul train. Instead he showed elaborate 3D sketches that imagined every detail, down to upholstery patterns, wooden parquet floors and staff uniforms. "It's the same as putting on a stage production: if the set, props, lighting and music are perfect, the actors can focus on their performance," says Mitooka.
Mitooka's work for JR Kyushu, a mid-sized regional railway on Japan's southwestern island, has made him a minor celebrity and the most sought-after designer of his generation. He has produced instantly recognisable trains – Yufuin-no-Mori, Aso Boy and Aru Ressha, to name a few – that have attracted tourists to the island's countryside.
At Don Design Associates, the Tokyo studio he started in 1973, Mitooka employs a staff of 13. While they use computers, Mitooka sketches in pencil on tracing paper at a long table made from bird's-eye maple. "I am too slow on a computer," he says.
Before trains were part of his repertoire, Mitooka was an illustrator for encyclopaedias and property ads but he had always been interested in becoming a designer. He worked for a design firm in Osaka and in his early twenties was offered a job with Arne Jacobsen that was rescinded after the Danish designer's unexpected death. Mitooka ended up working in Italy and then riding the railways around Europe. He drew on that experience when JR Kyushu gave him his first commission to design a resort train in 1989.
The son of furniture makers from Okayama, Mitooka creates interiors that bring Japan's craftsmanship traditions to the masses. For JR Kyushu's Tsubame Shinkansen he chose Nishijin brocade upholstery, cherrywood and cinnamon for window shades and maple for seats. His stubborn insistence on using wood and other natural materials went against the industry's preference for synthetic materials that met anti-flammability regulations. "People had interpreted 'non-flammable' to mean you can't use wood for train interiors," he says.
Mitooka's designs are rarely easy to execute. The Seven Stars' furniture and fixtures were all made to order and every car has different types of wood. Leaning against a wall of his office are three large wooden panels. They appear to be solid but in fact, a 0.2mm layer of wood treated to resist fire is pressed over an aluminium frame. "We did a lot of things that have never been tried before," he says.
Mitooka talks about retiring but at the moment he's too busy. He pulls out illustrations for a bus, a high-speed ferry and Shinkansen that he's been working on. There's also his sketch of a hotel near Mount Fuji. "I want this to be my last project," he says. It's hard to fathom how the industry would fare without him – or to imagine Mitooka exiting at the peak of his powers.
Twilight Express Mizukaze
Hotel on rails
If you had to design an elegant hotel or guest house, Kazuya Ura (pictured, on left) who heads a design firm in Chigasaki, west of Tokyo, would be a strong first choice. That's exactly why Osaka-based JR West approached Ura about creating the interior of a new "hotel on rails".
JR West will roll out its Twilight Express Mizukaze in spring 2017, a long-awaited successor to the Osaka-to-Sapporo Twilight Express that ended its 25-year run in 2015. The Mizukaze's helmet-like shape will pay homage to the US-made streamliners of the 1930s and will have wood-panelled lounges and dining cars, art deco-inspired patterns on the carpets and sleeping quarters for 34 passengers. "JR West wanted a modern design that would also have a nostalgic appeal," says Ura.
The train's route will take it from Osaka or Kyoto along the Pacific Coast or to the prefectures of Tottori, Shimane and Yamaguchi. Ura plans to use wood from these regions for the train's interiors. In fact, promoting the culture and craft of areas that few Japanese know is one of the project's main objectives, says Manabu Okada, a marketing manager at JR West. "We will help people explore the hidden side of Japan."
twilightexpress-mizukaze.jp
Shiki-Shima
Luxury sleeper train
Ken Okuyama (pictured, bottom) made his name designing carbon-fibre sports cars and sleek high-speed Shinkansen trains. But his ¥5bn (€40m) Train Suite Shiki-Shima for JR East is in a different league. For one thing, you can soak in a bath. "We have tubs made of cypress on board," says Okuyama, whose engineers built spillover chambers and carved grooves inside the tubs to prevent water sloshing around.
Built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Japan Transport Engineering, the 10-car train has sleeping quarters for 34 passengers as well as dining and lounge cars. The interior features the work of artisans from the northeastern Tohoku region: washi wallpaper, lacquer-covered fixtures and hand-carved kumiko lattice woodwork. "It's a challenging project for us. A lot of the materials have not been used before and everything inside has to meet tough flame-resistant standards," says project manager Soichi Tanaka.
Tickets for two, three or four-day trips from Tokyo's Ueno station will go for as much as ¥950,000 (€7,700) per person for deluxe suites. "We didn't want people to think that this was just any sleeper train," says Okuyama. "We felt it should have the same level of luxury as the best hotels in Tokyo."
Eki sutanpu
For a small country, Japan has a vast train network: 9,267 stations on hundreds of subway, monorail, commuter and Shinkansen lines. Stations come in all shapes and sizes, from ultramodern underground labyrinths to simple wooden shelters among rice paddies but the one feature they often share is the eki-sutanpu or station stamp.
Made of wood and rubber, these stamps show temples, festivals, castles or mascots – anything unique about a place. You find them on small tables near the turnstiles or near ticket machines with an ink pad and a stack of loose-leaf paper nearby. They're small reminders of rail journeys but rare collections can sell for hundreds of euros.
There is no official record of how the eki-sutanpu got its start but the earliest ones appeared sometime before the Second World War. In 1970 the Japanese National Railways launched a tourism campaign with 1,300 stamps for train stations around the country and ever since stamps have been a popular low-cost marketing tool to lure visitors and promote public transport.