Vancouver tops, Calgary named 5th most livable city
by Michelle S - February 23, 2011
23rd February: Vancouver has been named as the top livable city the world over by an annual survey undertaken by Economic Intelligence Unit
Toronto and Calgary have come at the fourth and fifth positions respectively as per the list of top livable cities released this Monday.
The survey included Australia, New Zealand and Canadian cities to arrive at the top ten list. Australian city Melbourne came second after Vancouver.
Apart from Melbourne, some of the other Australian cities emerging on top of the ‘Top 10 list’ include Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. New Zealand’s city Auckland also featured in this list.
Nearly 140 cities are selected in the annual survey of the EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit)on the basis of 30 factors including health care, education, stability, culture and environment and infrastructure.
The ratings given to each participating city include accepted, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.
It’s for the fifth consecutive year that Vancouver has won the rating of best livable city in the world. Vancouver got the score of 98 out of 100.
According to the EIU, Vancouver owes its top ranking, at least partially, to the successful hosting of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in the year 2010 which gave a big boost to the culture, infrastructure and the environment categories.
EIU happens to be the business arm of economics magazine based in the UK and provides livability ranking to different cities on the basis of lifestyle challenges beyond cost-of-living or income considerations, the authors of the study maintained.
Talking of the bottom ten cities in the annual survey, Harare, Zimbabwe comes at the top of the worst cities for living. And much of this could be attributed to the activities of Dictator Robert Mugabe.
The city got scores of 37.5 points out of 100. Bangladesh’s Dhaka was ranked at the second position in the top ten least livable cities by the EIU.
It was followed by Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Lagos, Nigeria and Karachi, Pakistan respectively. The US cities Pittsburg got a ranking of 29, while Los Angeles and New York City were ranked 44 and 56 respectively. All the 10 cities ranked in the bottom of the list are from Africa and Asia.
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