Best place to live

26 May 2010: Vienna has again been named as the ‘best’ city in the world, with the Austrian capital’s perennial Swiss rivals, Zurich and Geneva, following close behind. Vancouver and Auckland retain last year’s joint 4th positions. Overall, German-speaking cities occupy six places in the top ten in this year’s Quality of Living Survey by Mercer Consulting.

Compared to 2009, very little has changed in this year’s Mercer survey. Copenhagen remained 11th, Amsterdam is still ranked 13th, while Melbourne, a city which the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks third in the world, is in 18th place. Cities which have marginally improved their rankings include Ottawa and Hamburg. Canberra and Stuttgart are newcomers to the top 50.

Mercer rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6 and Baghdad 14.7. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, with an index score of 100.

Mercer’s Quality of Living Index list was revised and now covers 221 cities compared to 215 last year, which means direct trend comparison will not be possible until 2011.

European cities continue to dominate amongst the top 25 cities in the index. In the UK, London ranks at 39, while Birmingham is at 55 and Glasgow at 57. In the US, the highest ranking entry is Honolulu at position 31, followed by San Francisco at position 32. Singapore (28) is the top-scoring Asian city followed by Tokyo at 40. Baghdad, ranking 221, remains at the bottom of the list.

This year’s ranking also identifies the cities with the best eco-ranking based on water availability and drinkability, waste removal, quality of sewage systems, air pollution and traffic congestion. Calgary is at the top of this index (score 145.7), followed by Honolulu in second place (score 145.1) and Ottawa and Helsinki in joint third (score 139.9). Wellington in New Zealand (5), Minneapolis (6), Adelaide (7) and Copenhagen fill the next four slots, while Kobe, Oslo and Stockholm share ninth place. Port-au-Prince in Haiti ranks at the bottom of this table with a score of only 27.8.

Mercer said that a high-ranking eco-city optimised its use of renewable energy sources and generated the lowest possible quantity of pollution (air, water, noise, etc). “A city’s eco-status or attitude toward sustainability can have significant impact on the quality of living of its inhabitants. As a consequence these are also pertinent issues for companies that send employees and their families on long-term assignments abroad, especially considering the vast majority of expatriates are relocated to urban areas,” the researchers added.