The world's most liveable cities

The Global Liveability Survey is a measure of urban quality of life, published annually by the Economist Intelligence Unit/EIU. The EIU is a British multinational media company based in London, best known as publish­er of The Economist.

The survey assesses 140 of the world’s major cities in fixed categories: stability, education, universal health care, infrastructure (particularly public transport), culture and environment. Cities were scored out of 100, with the avail­ability of goods and services pushing scores up.. and personal risk (legality of guns, terrorist threats) pushing scores down.

In 2010 and 2011, Vancouver remained in top position. Even in 2014, 2015 and 2016, the top cities have remained amazingly constant. In fact the report noted that the top 10 cities were only separated by 1.8 percentage points:

1 Melbourne (97.5 points out of a possible 100);
2 Vienna;
3 Vancouver;
4 Toronto;
5 Calgary;
6 Sydney;
7 Helsinki;
8 Perth;
9 Adelaide; and
10: Auckland (95.7 points). 

Clearly Australian and Canadian cities did very well, capturing seven of the top 10 spots. 

Melbourne

 

Vienna

Vancouver

So why did the world’s most powerful cities not score well? Global business centres (cities with populations of 8 million+) such as New York, London, Paris and Tokyo were victims of their own success, with overstretched public transport, higher crime rates and crowding. London ranked only 53rd. And Honolulu outranked all the other USA cities that might have been bigger and more important eg New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In addition, The Economist Intelligence Unit said scores in Europe had been pushed slightly down by the euro-zone crisis.

The report concluded that the best scoring cities tended to be mid-sized cities (2-4 million) in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. Cities with a significant proportion of their area allocated to green parkland did well, as did cities with Olympic Games-standard sporting facilities.

Toronto

Calgary

Sydney

Undoubtedly not everyone agrees with the criteria used and not everyone agrees that the successful cities were equally liveable for all of their own residents. The Victorian Council of Social Service, for example, said Melbourne's top ranking failed to recognise the growing disparity between those who can afford to live where the services and jobs are, and those who have to live in areas of high unemployment, expensive housing and very long public transport commutes. But surely all aggregated statistics do that – they lose individual differences inside the overall results.

And I have another question. Does cultural diversity add to a city’s overall liveability? If GIU could measure cultural div­ersity (eg the proportion of a city’s population born overseas), Toronto might maximise its score. But then if climate was one of the included catagories, Toronto might go down the list a tad and Barcelona might go up the list.

The same Global Liveability Survey listed Damascus Syria as the least liveable city in the world in the latest index (August 2015), although Harare Zimbabwe, Dhaka Bangladesh, Tripoli Libya, Lagos Nigeria and Port Moresby PNG were close. But that too can change. Ongoing conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Libya might have been predicted, but totally unexpected terrorist tragedies in France, Belgium and Tunisia were not predict­ab­le. In Athens, governmental austerity reduced employment and reduced the provision of public services.

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European cities dominated the top 10 positions in the Quality of Living Rankings by Mercer, with Vienna remaining in the No.1 spot, and Zurich, Geneva, Munich, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Copenhagen coming in the top 10. How could the Mercer results be so different from the Global Liveability Survey results, in the same year? Apparently Mercer, an American global human resource and financial services consulting firm, is more influenced by business concerns eg the currency exchange regulations, banking services, housing costs and consumer goods.