S'pore ranked 35th most liveable city, elsewhere becoming more terrible

Standing still while others fall behind is also progress.

Sulaiman Daud | August 16, 2017, 04:50 PM

Singapore has been ranked the third most liveable city in Asia, according to a report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Global Liveability Survey ranks us just behind Osaka and Tokyo in Japan, and overall the 35th most liveable city in the world out of 140, jumping 11 spots since last year.

Singapore has finally beaten Hong Kong for the first time.

Reasons for good showing

But before we throw a party, it's important to understand the reasons why we've moved up the ladder this time round.

The survey assesses each city according to five broad categories:

  1. Stability
  2. Healthcare
  3. Culture and environment
  4. Education
  5. Infrastructure

From EIU

As you can see from the image above, each category is given a score based on a number of factors.

Add them all up, and you have a country's overall score from 1 (intolerable) to 100 (utopia).

Singapore scored a healthy 90.4 and rose 11 places in the ranks, mostly due to slight improvements in the 'Education' category.

While that sounds good, Singapore scored 88.7 in the 2016 report, which suggests that the improvement isn't as drastic.

So why the sudden rise in the rankings?

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War, good for absolutely nothing

The report said:

"The ongoing weakening of global stability scores has been made uncomfortably apparent by a number of high-profile incidents that have shown no signs of slowing in recent years. Violent acts of terrorism have been reported in many countries...

While not a new phenomenon, the frequency and spread of terrorism have increased noticeably and become even more prominent."

Oh.

If you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the news, you would recall Western cities recently hit by terror attacks, such as London, Paris and Berlin.

Over in Asia, political protests have thronged the streets of cities like Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.

The US has undergone a period of instability as well, with hate crimes on the rise and citizens protesting against the policies of President Donald Trump.

From Giphy

Some of the cities in the survey have even experienced war and conflict, like Damascus in Syria, Kiev in Ukraine and Tripoli in Libya.

As the survey puts it:

"Conflict is responsible for many of the lowest scores. This is not only because stability indicators have the highest single scores but also because factors defining stability spread to have an adverse effect on other categories.

For example, conflict will not just cause disruption in its own right, it will also damage infrastructure, overburden hospitals and undermine the availability of goods, services and recreational activities."

From Tenor

Victims of own success

Despite our breakneck pace of development, Singapore's size hasn't yet reached parity with the global financial hubs of the world.

These behemoths tend to become victims of their own success. The survey points out that the buzz associated with big cities can overstretch infrastructure and cause higher crime rates.

Truly massive metropolises like New York, London and Tokyo score highly on the culture and entertainment scale, but did poorly on the crime, congestion and public transport scores.

Singaporeans have felt the beginnings of this phenomenon, as our own ageing transport infrastructure struggles to cope with rising demand.

Still, things could be worse. Maybe this survey might make people pause for a minute or two, reflect on what we have as compared to our neighbours and friends around the world, and feel happier about our lives.

Or maybe not, since Singaporeans pride themselves as global citizens.

Here are some equally interesting but totally unrelated stories:

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Top image via Pixabay