The world’s most liveable cities

As we begin a new year and global average liveability continues its recovery from the pandemic, which cities are the world’s most liveable?

The Global Liveability Index

The Global Liveability Index is an annual survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that ranks 173 cities across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. All cities are targeted and comprise of places that are renowned business destinations or evolving to become one. The cities are constantly reviewed based on the cities where people are required to travel to most globally.

The ratings quantify the challenges that might be presented to a persons life, whether it is where they live, work or where their children go to school. All factors are measured objectively and captured to provide a fair representation of all people. There is also access to any publicly available data sources.

Many of the cities are in developing markets (including 11 in China) and fall in the lower half of the rankings. Around one-third are in developed markets and score more highly.

Key findings

While the index remains lower than the average score recorded pre-pandemic, the most liveable cities, according to the EIU, tend to be “mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density”.

Scores for infrastructure remained broadly stable, while stability has deteriorated, owing largely to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (largely affecting European cities). The war is also worsening global inflation and reducing global growth.

Out of the five recorded categories, the main improvements over the past year have been in culture and environment, education and healthcare, all of which were badly affected by lockdowns during previous rankings.

The bottom of the rankings remained stable even though most of the scores have globally improved.

What is measured?

Category 1: Stability (25%)

Category 2: Healthcare (20%)

Category 3: Culture & Environment (25%)

Category 4: Education (10%)

Category 5: Infrastructure (20%)

The data sources are derived from EIU ratings, the World Bank and Transparency International. This years rankings also continued the use of covid indicators comprising of healthcare and social distancing.

Regional changes

North America

Cities in the US and Canada increased their quality of life to near pre-pandemic levels - largely due to highly successful vaccination programs.

Latin America

Similar to North America, the region has seen significant improvement in overall liveability (2nd highest region). The recovery from pandemic is close to complete. The region performed well in education and culture but took a hit on stability due to higher crime rate - largely a result of involvement in international drug trade. Compared to other global cities, infrastructure in the region lags behind.

Western Europe

The region performed well (1st ranked region) and comprise six out of the top ten cities. It is highly liveable and had a strong response to the pandemic with lifting of restrictions and access to public services. Vaccinations have reduced number and severity of cases and populations have embraced the opportunity for life to return to close to normal. Government support programs have helped the pandemic-driven rise in unemployment and the number of businesses forced to close. Economic recovery has proceeded with “rigour”.

Eastern Europe

Recovery here has been stalled due to Russia’s invasion - widespread stability has been reduced in the region because of inflows of refugees, increased militarisation and higher risk of conflict spill-over into border countries. These downgrades have offset progress made in healthcare and culture.

Moscow (-15) and St Petersburg (-13) fell in their rankings as a result of greater instability and political and medial censorship. Western sanctions were imposed and brands like McDonalds, Starbucks and AmEx left the country and cultural offerings in cities were also reduced.

Warsaw (Poland) and Bucharest (Romania) also fell in rankings given the geo-political risk in the area.

Asia

This is the most diverse performing region. Although previously the most resilient, it has suffered volatility due to the pandemic. Most cities have controlled the affects of the pandemic but this is not true for the overall region. Australia and New Zealand cities saw a steep decline as a result of pandemic pressures although this is seen as a temporary moment with recovery in sight.

New Zealand and Australia cities saw the biggest move down amid continued impact of covid. Although their respective scores improved, the decline was by comparison to the improvement of other cities rather than a reduction in score. Chinese cities had a similar trajectory.

Middle East & North Africa

The region has taken important steps to develop and has seen the highest rise in healthcare by any region. With the exception of Damascus and Tripoli, held back by terrorism and conflict, all other 16 cities saw a score improvement - due to low stress of healthcare and opening up of cities. Damascus (Syria) continues to be remain bottom due to ongoing civil war. The overthrowing of Ghaddafi in Libya prompted the collapse of Tripoli which still suffers from sporadic violence.

Middle East cities have performed well in stability than culture, but low crime rates come at the expense of low civil liberties which add pressure to culture and environment scores. This was the primary region where score improvement can be observed in stability - largely due to stability of Bahrain (Oman) which has seen no major protests or civil unrest and general crime rate has declined.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Similar to the Middle East and North Africa, all cities have seen improvements particularly in covid recovery. There is an opposite trend compared to Middle East, where stability is poorer than culture and environment - largely due to conflict and terrorism in the region (presence of IS in Tunisia, Al Shabaab in Kenya and the aftermath of civil war in Libya).

The pandemic created more layers of challenges for these cities. Significant changes are not expected in these cities in the near future without a change in political direction.