Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve-centre has been ranked the fourth least city to live in the world, according to findings in the Global Liveability Index 2023 released on Thursday, by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU).
In the survey, the EIU, a sister organisation of The Economist, ranked 173 cities around the world on a number of significant factors, including health care, education, stability, infrastructure and environment.
Lagos was ranked fourth (170), Algiers, capital of Algeria (171) in third place; Tripoli, the Libyan capital was on the 172nd spot and the second least liveable city in the world, while Damascus, Syria was the worst liveable city globally.
The report observed that even at the bottom of the rankings, cities such as Lagos (Nigeria) and Algiers (Algeria) had gained ground, with some improvements in their healthcare and education systems.
It underscored the fact that both are in countries that are energy exporters and have to some extent benefited from higher global oil and gas prices.
“Although corruption continues to be an issue, some additional public funding has been made available for infrastructure and public services, which have also benefited from the decline in Covid cases.
“However, war-ravaged Damascus (Syria), the lowest-ranked city in our survey, has seen no improvement in its liveability scores despite the regional political comeback of its president, Bashar al-Assad,” the report said.
For the second consecutive year, the Austrian capital, Vienna, nicknamed the “city of dreams,” clinched the title of world’s most liveable city, based on a wide range of indicators.
Vienna topped the rankings for 2023, owing to its winning combination of stability, good culture and entertainment, reliable infrastructure, and exemplary education and health services.
It has occupied this position regularly over the past several years, with only the covid-19 pandemic causing the city to slip off the top spot last year.
Vienna was closely followed by Copenhagen (Denmark), and two Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne, both of which claimed the third and fourth spots, after a particularly infectious COVID-19 strain saw them tumble down the index last year.
Vancouver, Canada; Zurich, Switzerland; Calgary, Canada; Geneva, Switzerland; Toronto, Canada; and Osaka, Japan are ranked 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th respectively.
The rankings indicated that three Canadian cities made it to the top ten most liveable cities in the world.
Significantly, although Europe had a strong showing at the top of the list, European destinations also dominated the list of cities that suffered the biggest drops down the rankings this year.
The UK capital, London and Sweden’s capital, Stockholm both found themselves falling down the rankings, with the former dropping 12 places to 46th and the latter dropping 22 spots to 43rd position.
And after entering the liveability survey for the first time in 2022 on the 35th spot, Scotland’s capital Edinburgh fell to 58th place this year.
“None of these cities has seen a particularly sharp decline in their index scores, but they have failed to make the gains that many other cities – particularly those in Asia – have made in the past year,” reads the report.
The average index score across 172 cities (eliminating Kyiv in Ukraine) has now reached 76.2 out of 100, the highest score in 15 years.
According to the report, health care scores have improved the most, while those for education, culture and entertainment, and infrastructure are also higher.
EIU’s Liveabiity Index has risen significantly in the 2023 survey, reaching a 15-year high as the world moves on from the COVID19 pandemic and healthcare and education scores improve in many cities in Asia and the Middle East and Africa.
However, scores for stability have slipped backwards since last year, amid several instances of civil unrest around the world.
Western European cities slipped down the rankings in the 2023 survey, as increased instances of workers’ strikes and civil unrest have hurt their stability ratings, thereby failing to match gains made by cities in Asia and the Middle East.
Ndubuisi Francis
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 is in third place; Tripoli is on the 172nd spot and the second least liveable city in the world, while Damascus is ranked the worst liveable city globally.</p>
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