Australia

Australia contributes an unusual concentration of cities built to be lived in rather than to be capitals, and the atlas records them as such: Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart all enter on liveability before anything else. The country supplies a purpose-built capital laid out by an American competition winner in 1912, a surf town that became shorthand for a way of living, and a southern island whose art museum was funded by a professional gambler. The pattern is that almost nothing here is old and almost everything is deliberate.