Global Liveability Index - what can we learn?

Karachi fares poorly on index mainly due to stability and environment factors

NORTHAMPTON: The Global Liveability Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, is an annual indicator of living conditions in cities.

This year, Vienna remained the most liveable of 140 cities surveyed by the organisation. Vienna took the place of Melbourne, which had held the record of being the most liveable city in the world for the past seven years.

Besides Vienna, Copenhagen in Denmark is the only other city to be amongst the top 10 from Europe. The rest are divided between Australian cities [Sydney (third) and Adelaide (tenth)]; Japan [Osaka (fourth) and Tokyo (seventh)] and Canada [Calgary (fifth), Vancouver and Toronto (sixth and seventh)]. How is the index constructed and why is it important?

Construction of index

The concept of liveability, as described by the Global Liveability Index 2019 report, is that it rates cities after the assessment of locations around the world providing the best and worst living conditions.

The rating quantifies the challenges that might be posed to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location and allows for direct comparison between locations.

Every city is assigned a rating of comfort based on 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories – stability, healthcare, environment, education and infrastructure. These scores are then weighted to provide a score of 1-100 where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.

Pakistan and
Liveability Index

Sadly, Karachi falls under the 10 least liveable cities in the world. One of the main reasons why the city has scored poorly is primarily due to the stability, culture and environment factors.

The stability factor analyses cities on the basis of prevalence of petty and violent crime, threat of terror and threat of civil and military unrest. Although the city has witnessed much improvement on the security front relative to the past decade, more needs to be done to improve on this front.

The safety and stability aspect of cities is illustrated in another index called the Safe Cities Index, also compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The index is a combination of scores assessed in areas of digital, health, infrastructure and personal security of cities around the world.

Amongst the 60 cities ranked in that index, Karachi stands at number 57 with the assessment being particularly poor in areas of health and personal security.

Conclusions

There could be various criticisms on the construction of the Global Liveability Index and the weighing schemes involved but they do model reality and give a picture of the actual conditions faced by city residents.

More importantly, such indices created by prestigious organisations such as the Economist set perceptions of investors and the general public about the city. This could have significant ramifications for the business environment of not only the city but the country as a whole.

Better performers in the Global Liveability Index are medium-sized cities in wealthy countries. These cities are better performing due to well-funded public healthcare systems, compulsory and high-quality education and functional road and rail infrastructure.

There is also much to learn from certain cities such as Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire, which has shown a six-percentage-point improvement over the years. This has been attributed in the report to improved governance over the years. Will our policymakers pay heed?

The writer is a doctoral candidate at The Bartlett, UCL

Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th, 2019.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.