The Best and Worst Cities in the World

By Tom Kando

The annual 2011 Quality of Living Worldwide City Rankings by Mercer (London) has just come out.
The Mercer survey ranks 420 cities of the world. The report I saw lists 221 of them. These cities are ranked in terms of overall quality of life. This is based on several dozen factors, such as physical health, environmental pollution, standard of living, education, housing, crime, etc. Here are some of the results that were of greatest personal interest to me:A. Best city in the world: Vienna.

B. Worst city in the world: Baghdad, ranked #221.

C. 8 of the best 10 cities are in Europe, including: #1: Vienna, #2: Zurich, #4: Munich, #5: Dusseldorf, #7: Frankfurt; #8:Geneva, #9a: Bern and #9b: Copenhagen.

D. The other two in the top 10 are: #3: Auckland (New Zealand) and #6: Vancouver.

E. While I am talking about Europe, here are some other ones: #12: Amsterdam,
#17: Berlin, #26: Dublin, #30: Paris, #38 London (the highest ranking British city), #42: Milan, #52: Rome, #69: Prague, #73: Budapest (the two best East European cities), #199: Moscow - one of the lowest cities in the world, close to Dhaka, Bangladesh (#204) and Baghdad (#221).

F. The Americas: Dominated by Canada, including #5: Vancouver, #14: Ottawa,
#15: Toronto and #22: Montreal.

The US: Best cities: #29: Honolulu, #30: San Francisco, #36: Boston,
#43: Chicago, #47: New York City.

Latin Am.: No city in the top 50, and many near the bottom, such as #218: Port-au-Prince (Haiti).

G. Asia-Pacific: #3: Auckland (New Zealand), #11: Sidney, #25: Singapore
(the highest Asian city), #46: Tokyo, #70: Hong Kong.

H. Middle East and Africa: #74: Dubai and #78: Abu Dhabi are the 2 highest ranked cities of the Middle East, and #88:Cape Town is the highest city in Africa. #99: Tel Aviv. Eighteen of the bottom 25 cities of the world are in Africa.

Articles about the Mercer report give brief descriptions of these cities.

For example:

Vienna is described as “Austria’s cultural, economic, and political center with a population of about 1.7 million. It experiences 4 seasons in a year with a mild summer season and a rather windy and rainy winter season. It has an extensive transportation system and a very reliable health system. The country’s political stability also makes it a place worth living. Life expectancy in Vienna is 79.5 years.”
Vancouver is described as “...an amazing coastal city and a perfect place to live with a well developed and well established infrastructure, brilliant tourism spots, high educational standards and great health care system. The city has a population of 578,041 and an average life expectancy at birth of 81.16 years.”

Many of you will say right away that this stuff is very subjective. One person might put Amsterdam on top because of its red light district and cheap dope. Someone else remains forever attached to the city where he grew up - (in my case, Paris). And so forth.

But efforts such as the Mercer rankings deserve to be taken seriously. They are based on a great many objective criteria and pretty good methodology.

All in all, the report confirms what many of us already sort of thought, knew, or experienced. It is no surprise to see that an overwhelming majority of “bad” cities are in the Third World, first and foremost in Africa. Economics, obviously.

We also already knew that Eastern European cities are still struggling, even though they are progressing, hopefully.

That so many of the world’s highest quality-of-life cities are in Western Europe (Germany, Switzerland and Austria dominate) is probably irritating to many Americans and to other non-Europeans, and it could cause Europhiles such as myself to gloat. This is absolutely not my intent.

As to the Anglo-Saxon world, it is interesting that Canada, New Zealand and Australia appear to excel, but the US and the UK less so.

I hope that you find this interesting. Interpretations, anyone? leave comment here