Melbourne remains the most liveable location of the 140 cities surveyed in an annual report from The Economist, followed by the Austrian capital, Vienna. Vancouver, which was the most liveable city surveyed until 2011 lies in third place.
Bangkok, with a score of 65% – is ranked in 101st place globally. This is the same position as in 2012, and just one place higher than in the 2011 report. Last year liveability in Bangkok was ranked similarly to that in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Amman in Jordon. The full rankings of this year’s report have not yet been made widely available.
Jon Copestake, Editor of the Economist Intelligence Units’s Summary of Liveability Ranking and Overview 2013 report, said, "Liveability often seems static on a year-to-year basis. But looking at movements over a longer period we see some significant trends emerging. The improvement in Singapore – which saw a two-place rise- highlights the increasing availability of cultural activities. But elsewhere liveability has slipped, with civil unrest having a significant impact on liveability in this decade."
Over the past six months only 13 cities of 140 surveyed have experienced changes in scores, although 28 cities (20 percent of those surveyed) have seen changes over the past year. In some cases these are positive improvements in liveability driven by infra-structural development or easing instability. But in most cases liveability changes in recent years have been driven by civil unrest, with the Arab Spring, European austerity and Chinese discontent all contributing.
For the very top tier of cities, with scores of more than 80 percent, there is little change to report. This may reflect renewed stability as some economies begin to recover from the global economic crisis of a few years ago, although the continuing crisis in the euro zone and tighter fiscal budgets may also have slowed planned improvements, meaning that scores have remained static rather than moving up or down.
Nevertheless, unrest and protests in Madrid have prompted a slight downward revision in stability scores for the Spanish capital, pushing it five places down the ranking to 44th. However, the city still sits comfortably in the top tier of liveability.
According to the publishers of the report, the concept of liveability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location, and allows for direct comparison between locations.
Every city is assigned a rating of relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure. Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable. For quali-tative indicators, a rating is awarded based on the judgment of in-house analysts and in-city contributors. For quantitative indicators, a rating is calculated based on the relative performance of a number of external data points.
The scores are then compiled and weighted to provide a score of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. The liveability rating is provided both as an overall score and as a score for each category. To provide points of reference, the score is also given for each category relative to New York and an overall position in the ranking of 140 cities is provided.
Regionally, the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh is placed 10th on the list of most-improved countries ranked by livebility – jumping 1.56 percent over a five-year period although still finds itself placed 126 of the 140 cities survey as part of this report.
Top ten cities
1 Melbourne, Australia
2 Vienna, Austria
3 Vancouver, Canada
4 Toronto, Canada
5 Calgary, Canada
6 Adelaide, Australia
7 Sydney, Australia
8 Helsinki, Finland
9 Perth, Australia
10 Auckland, New Zealand
Bottom ten cities
131 Tehran, Iran
132 Douala, Cameroon
133 Tripoli, Tripoli
134 Karachi, Pakistan
135 Algiers, Alergia
136 Harare, Zimbabwe
137 Lagos, Nigeria
138 Port Moresby Papua New Guinea
139 Dhaka, Bangladesh
140 Damascus, Syria
The full report cna be fouund here:
Andrew Batt, International Group Editor of PropertyGuru Group, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email andrew@propertyguru.com.sg
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