Every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) - part of a group that publishes The Economist magazine - looks at the world's cities and ranks them according to the quality of their living conditions in their Global Liveability Survey. These annual city liveability rankings are reported widely in the media and are the source of great pride for the winners.
Originally, the EIU created the rankings to supply guidelines for international companies that sent employees to offices in foreign locations; the companies needed to know if they had to pay an extra allowance - and how much that should be - to people relocating to places that were less comfortable or 'liveable' than the city they were leaving. 1
But just what makes one city more 'liveable' than another? Cities are judged based on political and social stability, crime rate, availability of services, job security and quality of health care. Other important criteria are range and quality of cultural events, education, natural environment and standard of infrastructure including public transport. 2
The survey takes a close look at 140 cities around the world and scores them from 0-100 on 30 important factors spread across five main areas: stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. 3 Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.
Usually, cities that score best are mid-sized and in wealthier countries. 4 This is very important because fewer people and more land means that there are more recreational facilities, and that public transport is not crowded. For 2011, seven of the top ten scoring cities were in Australia and Canada. With a population density of 3 for Australia and 3.5 people per sq km for Canada, they compare very favourably with the world average of 47 and the US average of 32.
For 2011, Melbourne, in Australia's south, topped the table with a score of 97.5. It was closely followed by Vienna, Austria; Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary (Canada); Sydney, Australia; Helsinki, Finland; Perth and Adelaide (Australia); and in tenth place Auckland, New Zealand. Not surprisingly, all of the cities in the top ten are in countries with high-quality, public health care and education, very strict gun laws, and vibrant democracies.
5 London was 53rd, and New York was 56th. They both scored low on stability due to the threat of terror and the rates of crime. And, as expected, the eurozone countries experiencing economic crisis also did badly in the rankings. Greece's capital, Athens dropped from 62 in 2010 to 67th in 2011. At the bottom of the rankings in 140th place, was Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, due to very low scores for stability, health care and infrastructure.
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