Depending on who you read, Singapore is either the 18th, 26th or 54th most liveable city in the world. It is ranked 18th, 26th and 54th in different surveys. But such indexes reflect expat, not local, life
In the latest issue of global affairs magazine Monocle, Singapore is ranked 18th in its annual Top 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009 index, above Montreal, Kyoto and Geneva. Zurich was top, followed by Copenhagen and Tokyo.
Yet, barely a month ago, global business intelligence company The Economist Intelligence Unit placed Singapore in 54th spot, out of 140 cities, in its annual liveability ranking, behind Osaka and Hong Kong and ahead of Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
In international consulting firm Mercer's quality of living survey published in April, Singapore finished in the 26th spot - the highest placing among Asian cities including Tokyo.
What is one to make of the different rankings since they all purport to tell people the same thing: which cities are better or worse to live in, using criteria such as housing, health-care services and public infrastructure.
While all three rankings have the same objective, they use slightly different criteria.The Economist Intelligence Unit - the business information arm of The Economist Group, publisher of the international affairs magazine, The Economist - assesses the living conditions in 140 cities around the world. It assigns a rating for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories - stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
Mercer's rankings are also based on a point-scoring index and cover 215 cities which are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories.
These categories are political and social environment, economic environment, socio-cultural environment, health and sanitation, education, public services and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, and housing and natural environment.
Monocle goes beyond hard economic data and includes 'soft' factors such as hours of sunshine, ease of opening a business and a city's tolerance of alternative lifestyles.
