Rupert and Wendi Murdoch have put their North Shore summer getaway, on the market for $12.8 million.

With a spate of revamped hotels and upgraded kitchens, a robust local art scene, and those ever-gorgeous beaches, the summer perennial has rarely looked better.

For this special edition of Strategist, we subjected six great metropolises—London, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney, Rome, and Miami—to the same scrutiny we bring to our own city every week. Now all you have to do is get on the plane.