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:: IUESA has published a Summary of the Livability Ranking and Overview ::

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The findings of the latest livability survey

Melbourne in Australia remains the most livable of the 140 cities surveyed, very closely followed by the Austrian capital, Vienna. In fact, only 0.1 percentage points separate the top two cities, and just 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points separate Canada’s Vancouver and Toronto, respectively, from Melbourne.

Another Canadian city, Calgary, shares joint fifth place with Adelaide in Australia. Although the top five cities remain unchanged, the past year has seen increasing instability across the world, causing volatility in the scores of many cities. Sydney, for example, has fallen by four places, to move out of the ten most livable cities, owing to a heightened perceived threat of terrorism. This has allowed Hamburg in Germany to move up to tenth place, although other German cities, such as Frankfurt and Berlin, have experienced declines in stability. Over the past six months, 16 cities of the 140 surveyed have experienced changes in scores. This rises to 35 cities, or 25% of the total number surveyed, when looking at changes over the past year. Of these changes, the majority have been negative (29 in the past 12 months), reflecting deteriorating stability as cities around the world face heightened threats of terrorism or unrest.

The continuing weakening of global stability scores has been made uncomfortably apparent by a number of high-profile incidents that have not shown any signs of slowing in recent years. Violent acts of terrorism have been reported in many countries, including Turkey, Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, France, Belgium and the US. This has been a year undoubtedly marked by terrorism. While not a new phenomenon, its frequency and spread have increased noticeably and become even more prominent in the past year.

Terrorism has also been compounded by unrest and, in more extreme cases, civil war in some countries. Libya, Syria, Iraq and Ukraine remain the subject of high-profile armed conflicts, while a number of other countries, such as Nigeria, continue to battle insurgent groups. Meanwhile even relatively stable countries such as the US have seen mounting civil unrest linked to the Black Lives

Matter movement, which has scrutinized the large number of deaths of black people while in police custody. Beyond this, the world has also seen increased diplomatic tensions between countries, weighing on stability. Russia’s own posturing in Ukraine and the Middle East has been well reported, but China has also been diplomatically more aggressive in the South China Sea, and tensions remain between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region. As a result, it is not surprising that declining stability scores have been felt around the world.

However, those cities moving up the ranking are located largely in countries that have enjoyed periods of relative stability after previously reported falls in livability. Despite continuing to rank in the lower tiers of livability, Middle Eastern cities, such as Tehran in Iran and Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia, as well as the South-east Asian city of Bangkok in Thailand, have seen scores improve as civil stability has recovered. In total, there are just six cities with improved scores over the past 12 months.

The impact of declining stability is most apparent when a five-year view of the global average scores is taken. Overall, the global average livability score has fallen by 0.9% to 74.8% over the past five years, and one-quarter of this decline has come in the past year. Weakening stability has been a key factor in driving this decrease. The average global stability score has fallen by 2.4% over the past five years, from 73.7% in 2012 to 71.3% now.

Over five years, 96 of the 140 cities surveyed have seen some change in overall livability scores. Of these cities, 71 have seen declines in livability, up from 52 just six months ago. Two cities in particular, Damascus in Syria and Kiev in Ukraine, have seen significant declines, of 26 and 25 percentage points respectively, illustrating that conflict is, unsurprisingly, the key factor in undermining wider livability.

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Although the most livable cities in the world remain largely unchanged, there has been movement within the top tier of livability. Of the 65 cities with scores of 80 or more, 17 have seen a change in score in the past 12 months. As global instability grows, these movements have been overwhelmingly negative, with no city in the top tier registering a score improvement.

US cities have recently seen further declines in scores. This partly stems from unrest related to a number of deaths of black people either in police custody or shot on the street despite being unarmed in the past couple of years. Paris is another city that has seen a sharp decline in its ranking, due to a mounting number of terrorist attacks taking place in the city, and in other parts of the country, over the past three years. Nevertheless, with such high scores already in place, the impact of such declines has not been enough to push any city into a lower tier of livability. Although 17.2 percentage points separate Melbourne in first place from Warsaw in 65th place, all cities in this tier can lay claim to being on an equal footing in terms of presenting few, if any, challenges to residents’ lifestyles.

Nonetheless, there does appear to be a correlation between the types of cities that sit right at the very top of the ranking. Those that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density. These can foster a range of recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Six of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, which have, respectively, population densities of 3.1 and 3.9 people per square kilometer. Elsewhere in the top ten, Finland and New Zealand both have densities of approximately 18 people per square kilometer of land area. These densities compare with a global (land) average of 57 and a US average of 35. Austria bucks this trend with a density of 104 people per square kilometer. However, Vienna’s population of over 1.74m (2.6m in the metropolitan area) people is relatively small compared with the megacities of New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.

It may be argued that violent crime is on an upward trend in the top tier of cities, but these observations are not always correct. According to the most recently released statistics, after a record low number of murders in 2013, Vancouver saw its murder rate increase in 2014, but 2013 and 2014 were still the years with the lowest national murder rates in Canada since 1966. Although crime rates are perceived as rising in Australia, the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, recorded a crime rate of 7,489.5 per 100,000 people in 2013/14. This reflected an increase of 3.7% compared with 2012/13, but despite the increase in the crime rate in three consecutive years, the 2013/14 rate was still 1.6% lower than ten years earlier. In Austria, the murder rate was just 0.5 per 100,000 people in 2014. In the same year, there were reports that only nine murders had been recorded in Vienna, a city of 1.74m people, with a murder rate matching the national average. Overall, crime rates have remained steady. These figures compare with a global average of 6.2 murders per 100,000 people (2013) and a US average of 4.5 per 100,000 (2014).

Global business centers tend to be victims of their own success. The “big city buzz” that they enjoy can overstretch infrastructure and cause higher crime rates. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo are all prestigious hubs with a wealth of recreational activity, but all suffer from higher levels of crime, congestion and public transport problems than are deemed comfortable. The question is how much wages, the cost of living and personal taste for a location can offset livability factors. Although global centers fare less well in the ranking than mid-sized cities, for example, they still sit within the highest tier of livability and should therefore be considered broadly comparable, especially when contrasted with the worst-scoring locations.

Civil war in worst performers has been globally destabilizing

Of the poorer-scoring cities, 13 continue to occupy the very bottom tier of livability, where ratings fall below 50% and most aspects of living are severely restricted. Continued threat from groups like Boko Haram acts as a constraint to improving stability in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The livability scores for Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, are still in recovery. Escalations in hostilities in Libya have prompted a sharp decline in livability in Tripoli as the threat to stability from Islamic State (IS, an extreme global jihadi group) continues to spread across the Middle East and North Africa. Damascus has seen a stabilization in its dramatic decline in livability but remains ranked at the bottom of the 140 cities surveyed.

The relatively small number of cities in the bottom tier of liveability partly reflects the intended

scope of the ranking—the survey is designed to address a range of cities or business centres that

people might want to live in or visit. For example, the survey does not include locations such as Kabul

in Afghanistan and Baghdad in Iraq. Although few could currently argue that Damascus and Tripoli are

Likely to attract visitors, their inclusion in the survey reflects cities that were deemed relatively stable just a few years ago. With the exception of crisis-hit cities, the low number of cities in the bottom tier also reflects a degree of convergence, where levels of livability are generally expected to improve in developing economies over time. This long-term trend has been upset by the heightened, widespread reach of terrorism over the past five years.

Conflict is responsible for many of the lowest scores. This is not only because stability indicators have the highest single scores but also because factors defining stability spread to have an adverse effect on other categories. For example, conflict will not just cause disruption in its own right, it will also damage infrastructure, overburden hospitals and undermine the availability of goods, services and recreational activities. With the exception of Kiev, the Middle East, Africa and Asia account for all 13 cities, where violence, whether through crime, civil insurgency, terrorism or war, has played a strong role.

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About The Economist Intelligence Unit’ livability survey

How the rating works

The concept of livability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing livability 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 livability 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 cross 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 qualitative 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 livability 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.

The suggested livability scale

Companies pay a premium (usually a percentage of a salary) to employees who move to cities where living conditions are particularly difficult and there is excessive physical hardship or a notably unhealthy environment. The Economist Intelligence Unit has given a suggested allowance to correspond with the rating. However, the actual level of the allowance is often a matter of company policy. It is not uncommon, for example, for companies to pay higher allowances—perhaps up to double The Economist Intelligence Unit’s suggested level.

How the rating is calculated

The livability score is reached through category weights, which are equally divided into relevant subcategories to ensure that the score covers as many indicators as possible. Indicators are scored as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable. These are then weighted to produce a rating, where 100 means that livability in a city is ideal and 1 means that it is intolerable. For qualitative variables, an “EIU rating” is awarded based on the judgment of in–house expert country analysts and a field correspondent based in each city. For quantitative variables, a rating is calculated based on the relative performance of a location using external data sources.

  
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