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Singapore has been ranked third in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2021 Safe Cities Index (SCI), a one-position drop from its second place ranking in the 2019, 2017, and 2015 versions of the SCI.

The fourth edition of the SCI, which ranks 60 cities worldwide across five continents, was released on Monday (Aug. 23).

Top 10 cities

The SCI "measures the multifaceted nature of urban safety, with 76 indicators organised along five pillars: personal, health, infrastructure, digital, and — new this year — environmental security".

Here is the list of the overall ranking of top 10 cities in the Safe Cities Index 2021:

1. Copenhagen

2. Toronto

3. Singapore

4. Sydney

5. Tokyo

6. Amsterdam

7. Wellington

8. Hong Kong

8. Melbourne

10. Stockholm

Similar to the 2019 iteration of the SCI, six of the top 10 cities are in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, the top three have changed.

In the 2019, 2017, and 2015 iterations of the SCI, Tokyo was always ranked first, Singapore second, and Osaka third.

This year, Singapore has been bumped to third position, Tokyo to fifth, and Osaka to 17th.

Replacing Tokyo in first position is Copenhagen, with 82.4 points out of 100, and pushing back Singapore to third position with 80.7 points is Toronto, with 82.2 points in second position.

However, the executive summary of the report states that the change in the top three rankings "reflects not a tectonic shift but more a reordering among cities that have always come close to the top."

Changes in index framework, Singapore's rankings

The index framework has been extensively reevaluated and has undergone significant changes, including updates to existing indicators, updates to scoring methodology, the addition of new indicators under existing domains, and the addition of a new domain to the framework — environmental security.

The inclusion of the new pillar of environmental security "reflects the increased importance of sustainability issues and climate adaptation measures amid the pandemic".

While Singapore ranked second for the categories of digital, health, and infrastructure security in the 2021 SCI, it ranked only 37th for environmental security.

Singapore had consistently ranked first for personal safety in the previous three SCI publications, but dropped this year to 13th position.

Singapore has a notable difference between its score on personal security outputs — in first place with 97.3 — and personal security inputs — in 40th place with 51.7.

Personal security output indicators include issues such as the prevalence of crimes, severity of terrorist attacks, deaths from substance abuse, level of corruption, and the prevalence of domestic violence.

For personal security inputs, indicators include gun regulation and enforcement, police personnel per capita, laws on domestic violence, and laws on sexual harassment.

Clean government fundamental to a safe city

The SCI report found that cities with higher scores in the Human Development Index do better in the Safe Cities results, and that income and transparency are strongly correlated with higher index scores.

It pointed out that there is a "likely link" between transparency and security: "Clean government is a fundamental requirement for a city to be safe."

The results of SCI 2021 also suggest that different global regions may have different strengths, in terms of specific pillars of security.

For example, high-income cities in Asia-Pacific tend to do better on health security, whereas high-income European cities do better on average on personal security, and North American ones on digital security.

The report acknowledged that the sample size is too small to generalise about reasons for the differences, but still "suggest that the priority given to various kinds of security may be affected by distinct historical experiences at the regional, national or city level".

Covid-19 and environmental security

It also stated that Covid-19 has demonstrated the need for "a more holistic approach to health security and its closer integration into urban resilience planning.

"It is still too early to draw detailed conclusions on the implications of [C]ovid-19 for health security. [...] Nonetheless, the need to rethink health system preparedness is already clear."

For the new pillar of environmental security, the report stated that while most cities have strong environmental policies, the challenge is in the implementation.

A notable difference that the report found was that middle-income cities did far better in the environmental security pillar than any other security pillar.

One possible reason for this, the report said, citing experts, could be because "environmental resilience at the urban level had a high profile in the global south before moving up the agenda in the north".

You can read the SCI 2021's full report of its findings here.

Top photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash.

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