Ranking on living quality in 2016

The  American HR Consultancy Mercer selected the cities with the best quality of living in its current ranking: Vienna was once again the winner. Austria’s capital city is followed by Zurich, Auckland, Munich and Vancouver. It can clearly be seen in the results of the global study that no less than seven of the top ten cities are located in Western Europe. Alongside Auckland (New Zealand) only Sydney (Australia) made it into the top ten as a non-European city.

The ranking assesses all factors which influence the quality of living of a city’s residents; on the one hand invariable conditions such as the geographic location and climate are included in this. On the other hand, political and social situations play an important role as well. This is how, as an example, the specialists at Mercer analyze the safety and sanitation as well as recreational options. In part the results of this ranking differ significantly from other city rankings, such as the one by Knight Frank and Wealth-X / Sotheby’s, which we already reported about. These refer to the attractiveness of the city as a location for luxury real estate. Accordingly, US metropolitan cities are specially represented in contrast to the Mercer ranking.

Is Western Europe generally more attractive in terms of quality of living? Not necessarily, as the experts of Mercer say: Growing economic and political uncertainties, even in Europe, are reflected in a poorly evaluated security situation, for example, concerning terrorist threats or violent demonstrations. The large European cities such as Paris, London, Madrid and Athens are thus dropping in the evaluation. In contrast to this, alongside Vancouver in the top ten, Toronto, Ottawa, San Francisco and Boston are in the top fifty as well as Honolulu, Chicago and New York City.

Cities with a high quality of living are rarely found in the Far East and Oceania regions or in Africa and the Middle East. Exceptions are, for example, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Towards the end of the top 100 we find Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Port Louis (Mauritius) and three cities in South Africa (Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg).