The release of the list of countries with the best and worst cities to live in on Tuesday made nonsense of the Mega City noise Lagos State government has been making over the years.
This is because The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU’)s 2018 report has ranked Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, the third worst city to live in among 140 cities worldwide.
The city was ranked 138th of the 140 countries ranked by the EIU. In 2017, Lagos was ranked the second worst city to live in after Damascus.
With a relatively low score of 38.5 per cent, the city was just a little above Syria’s war-torn capital, Damascus, and Bangladesh’s Dhaka. Both cities are hotbeds of violence, destruction and war.
The new ranking saw the Australian capital, Melbourne, lose the title of world’s most liveable city after a seven-year reign after dropping to second by just 0.7 percent. The city was piped to the post by Vienna, which received an overall score of 99.1 percent. According to the EIU, Austria’s capital’s rise to the top was attributed to increased security scores due to a return to relative stability across much of Europe after high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years.
The annual list assesses stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure in 140 different cities of the world.
On a larger scale, the ranking showed, global liveability has improved for the second year in a row, increasing from 74.8 per cent last year to 75.7 per cent in 2018.
In the new ranking, published Monday, Japan’s Osaka and Tokyo have now moved up into the top ten, coming in third and seventh place respectively. Both cities achieved their highest ranking on the survey this year thanks to a decline in crime rates as well as improvements in public transportation.
According to the report summary: “Osaka stands out especially, having climbed six positions, to third place, over the past six months, closing the gap with Melbourne.
“It is now separated from the former top-ranked city by a mere 0.7 of a percentage point. Osaka’s improvements in scores for quality and availability of public transportation, as well as a consistent decline in crime rates, have contributed to higher ratings in the infrastructure and stability categories respectively.”
Hamburg and Helsinki, that held tenth and ninth place last year, have dropped out of the top ten, while this year’s ninth place spot went to Copenhagen, which achieved a score of 96.8 per cent.
Canada, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver also performed relatively well, the report said.
The report noted that global business centres tend to be victims of their own success because the ‘big city’ buzz they enjoy could overstretch infrastructure and cause higher crime rates. It noted that New York (57th), London (48th) and Paris (19th), for instance, are all prestigious hubs with numerous recreational activities but they all suffer from higher levels of crime, congestion and public transport problems.
The report showed without much surprise that Syria’s war-torn capital, Damascus, continues to languish at the bottom of the list, with an overall score of 30.7 per cent. It was followed by Bangladesh’s Dhaka and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial centre.