City of Vienna tops the ranking in terms of quality of life for the second consecutive year, while Luxembourg is considered the safest city, according to the annual survey by Mercer Consulting’s office on places where people live well, according to AFP.
Baghdad remains a place with the most difficult living conditions. In the top 25, half of the cities are European, with Germany and Switzerland having each three cities in the top ten. Zurich (Switzerland) and Auckland (Australia) completed the podium, followed by Munich (Germany) on the fourth, fifth position is occupied by Dusseldorf and Vancouver.
At the bottom of the table appear cities marked by “civil unrest, high levels of crime and the relative application of the law”, says Slagin Parakatil, main creator of the survey, quoted in a statement. Some of the cities at the bottom of the list are Khartoum (Sudan), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), N’Djamena (Chad) Bangui (Central African Republic), all of them higher than Baghdad in the top.
Paris has climbed four places from last year, reaching in 2011 the 30th place. For the first time in the annual survey by the consulting office, Mercer has also compiled a ranking on ‘individual security’, based on internal stability, crime rates, the effectiveness of law enforcement and international relations of the country. In this regard, Luxembourg is the safest city, followed by Bern (Switzerland), Helsinki (Finland) and Zurich. Vienna is in fifth place and Baghdad again last.
In North America, Canadian cities are ahead of the United States cities. New York, a reference city for Mercer survey, ranks 47th on the quality of life and 68th in terms of individual security, on par with London and Madrid. The study included 221 cities, based on 39 elements of quality of life, especially regarding the political, social and economic parameters, but also leisure, housing and environment (climate and natural disasters).