The American West has been settled; the wild places tamed. The search for quality of life is Americans’ new, personal, ever-changing frontier.

And, just as in beautiful Ireland or Italy or Spain, tough times have made our search for the good life more challenging of late. It would be interesting, in fact, to see where the United States would rank if a worldwide quality-of-life survey were conducted in 2012.

A possible indicator, though - and not a very promising one - is the Mercer Human Resources Group’s worldwide quality-of-living ranking of cities, completed last year. Only six U.S. cities made the list of the world’s 50 most agreeable places to live. And you have to go all the way to Number 29 before the first one - Honolulu - shows up.