Her Name Is Rio, And She's Really Happy

According to Forbes, the world's happiest urbanites aren't American, nor are they European. Australian? Nope. The financial magazine has instead dubbed Rio de Janeiro the most jubilant city in the world.

I guess you can't blame them. Rio has those beautiful mountains overlooking a gorgeous coastline. The weather is blissful, the booties plentiful, the dancing delectable -- then of course there's Carnival. But are they really *the* happiest people in the world?

Not necessarily.

The survey was conducted by Simon Anholt, an author and policy adviser, who admits that happiness is hard to measure. Data was gathered from online interviews with 10,000 respondents in 20 different countries around the world, but the questions focused more on where people imagined they would be happy -- not where they are indeed happiest.

"This is a survey of perception, not a survey of reality," he says. "People write me all the time and say 'that's not true.' It probably isn't true, but it's what people think. The gap between perception and reality is what interests city governments."

So the survey is really a compilation of where we think the grass is greener. That might explain why New York City didn't make the list. When was the last time you saw a blade of grass in NYC?

The other cities to round out the top 10 are as follows:

1. Rio, Brazil
2. Sydney, Australia
3. Barcelona, Spain
4. Amsterdam, Netherlands
5. Melbourne, Australia
6. Madrid, Spain
7. San Francisco, California
8. Rome, Italy
9. Paris, France
10. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Check out a slideshow of the world's happiest cities here... and cry over the fact that your city isn't among them.

Photo by Darragh Worland.