Vienna, the capital of Austria, has been ranked the world’s most liveable city for the second consecutive year in the latest report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIY). New Delhi and Mumbai are at 141st position with their identical score of 60.2 in a list of 173 cities across the world. Chennai has scored 59.9 and ranked 144th, Ahmedabad is 147th with a score of 58.9 and Bengaluru’s 58.7 score has secured it the 148th spot.
The EYI publishes its report every year. The ranking is based on several parameters including health care, education, stability, infrastructure and the environment. The EIU’s Global Liveability Ranking is published every year since 2009. The only break occurred in 2020 owing to the Covid pandemic. In the 14 reports out so far, no US city have ever been ranked in the top 10. The highest score a city can get is 100. For Mumbai, the ranking remains unchanged from last year, although its score has improved slightly from 56.2 in 2022. Delhi had scored 56.2 last year and has shown improvement. However, it has dropped one place this year from the 140th rank it had secured last year.
The most significant improvement was seen in Bengaluru. From being scored as the least liveable city in India last year with a score of 54.4, India’s IT city’s score improved by 4.3 points — the most for any Indian city — although its ranking dropped from 146th to 148th. This was primarily due to improvements in other cities, an analysis of the rankings list shows. In terms of improvements, Bengaluru is followed by Chennai, whose livability score improved by 4.1 points from last year.
The average improvement in livability scores in the Asia Pacific region — of which India is a part — was about 4.4 points (from 69.1 to 73.5), meaning that no Indian city outpaced the regional average.
The world’s most liveable cities according this ranking are : 1 Vienna, Austria, 2 Copenhagen, Denmark 3 Melbourne, Australia 4 Sydney, Australia, 5 Vancouver, Canada, 6 Zurich, Switzerland, 7 Calgary, Canada and 8 Geneva, Switzerland, 9 Toronto, Canada and 10 Osaka, Japan and Auckland, New Zealand.
The world’s least livable cities, according to the index, are : 1 Douala (Cameroon), 2 Kyiv (Ukraine), 3 Harare (Zimbabwe), 4 Dhaka (Bangladesh), 5 Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), 6 Karachi (Pakistan), 7 Lagos (Nigeria), 8 Algiers (Algeria), 9 Tripoli (Libya) and Damascus (Syria).
It is seen that the ranking has been dominated by cities in Europe, Australia, and Canada. This year’s top 11, for example – two cities tied for 10th place – is made up of four cities in Europe, three in Canada, two in Australia, and one each in Japan and New Zealand. Last year, when two cities were tied for both third and 10th places, the list consisted of six cities in Europe, three in Canada and one each in Japan and Australia.
Vienna – population around 20 lakh – had topped the ranking in 2018 and 2019 before sliding to the 12th position in early 2021 because of a series of lockdowns, due to which its museums and restaurants suffered, many had to close down. Consequently, Auckland could claim the top spot.
In finalizing the list, the EIU studied 173 cities across the world. While a full ranking of all these cities will be available soon, the report notes that Los Angeles and San Diego in California have slipped down 17 places in the ranking from last year and are not in the top 50. During the pandemic, many US citizens chose to moved out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and other cities because of their high taxes and rents, as well as in quest of a different lifestyle.
Many factors impact a personal decision to settle somewhere or leave the place and migrate. In the US, its health insurance system is always under fire. In a 2021 report by the Commonwealth Fund, the US health system was ranked at the bottom of eleven high-income countries. The other main expense is on education for the average American family. Compared to many European countries, US college graduates enter the world of work with higher debts, with annual tuition for 2021 to 2022 year for public four-year colleges being on average $10,740 for state residents and $27,560 for out-of-state residents. In Austria, higher education is largely free. Since the EIU started the ranking in 2009, Melbourne has topped the list seven times, Vienna four times, Vancouver, Canada twice and Auckland once.
Although EIU has given Mumbai a good ranking amongst Indian cities, the residents of this metropolis will reject it with an overwhelming majority. As predicted in this column earlier, the first showers have created a havoc in Mumbai with many areas witnessing water logging. The condition of most roads in Mumbai is pitiable, to say the least. Garbage is seen all around. There is hardly any space left for pedestrians on the pavements.
As far as the five parameters decided by EIU are concerned, Mumbai’s performance on all of them is dismal. Infrastructure, healthcare, education, stability and the environment are the main focus areas of the ranking exercise. Anyone living and working in Mumbai will undoubtedly scoff at the ranking and began complaining about the lack of all five. Almost all public medical facilities in Mumbai are over-burdened. There are not enough hospital beds. The BMC’s efforts to provide healthcare at a token levy are proving inadequate since there are not enough medicines, the staff is callous and touts are making hay in this situation. Educational facilities are often found lacking as the number of teachers is much less than desired, there is no clean drinking water or toilets, hardly any school has a good playground. The environment in Mumbai is so vitiated that pollution has become part and parcel for most Mumbaikars, who keep on hankering for open spaces and gardens, some recreation avenues and clean sea beaches.
EIU needs to send another team to Mumbai and obtain first-hand data so that it can rethink about its ranking methods. They are not relevant, at least for Mumbai.
A Column By
Dilip Chaware – Senior Editor
A media professional for 43 years, with extensive experience of writing on
a variety of subjects; he is also a documentary producer and book author.
