Europe is divided by quality of life
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The Global livability index 2022 published byEconomist, which each year define the most liveable and least liveable cities in the world, clearly divides Europe between west and east: some of the western cities are among those where you live best, and in general all have high scores; Eastern cities are at the bottom of the classification, with a widespread decline in the indices of due well-being also due to the direct and indirect effects of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, as well as a more complex exit from the pandemic emergency.
Vienna is back in 2022 at the top of the world rankingsas happened in three of the last five surveys (on the other two occasions in first place there were Auckland and Melbourne) and in the first ten places of the classification there are six cities in Western Europe: Copenhagen and Zurich second and third, Geneva sixth, Frankfurt seventh, Amsterdam ninth, all with values above 95 points out of 100.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (a financial analysis and consultancy firm owned by the editorial group of the British weekly) assesses the quality of life and services in 172 cities around the world. It does so on the basis of five criteria: cultural life and environmental conditions account for 25 percent of the final score, stability (including safety) for another 25, the quality of the health system and infrastructure for 20 percent each and the goodness of the education system for 10. The result is an index from 0 to 100 in which the most livable cities have the highest score.
The gap with the cities of Eastern Europe is substantial: Istanbul is the worst, followed by Baku (the EIU includes Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the European context), Bucharest, St. Petersburg and Sofia, with scores between 57.7 and 68, 6. In all the cities of Eastern Europe they have significantly lower scores than in the West: the distances, already present in the past, in this last year they have increased and have now reached twenty points on average.
The difficult exit from the health emergency is one of the factors that conditioned the indicators: the already deficient health systems were put in serious difficulty by the pandemic and by a much slower distribution of vaccines. The increase in authoritarian tendencies, in Turkey as in Russia, has affected the liveability of cities, also hit by strong economic pressures: on the one hand the very high beat that hits Turkey, on the other the first effects of the sanctions on Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have lost 15 and 13 places (scores are likely to drop next year).
It was not possible to include Kiev in the investigation: data collection in the Ukrainian capital, which was last or second to last in the European rankings from 2014 onwards, has been blocked since the beginning of the war. Cities Budapest or Warsaw saw their “stability” scores drop for the same reason.
The cities of Western Europe, on the other hand, have mostly seen a marked improvement in their indices, mainly due to the increase in the quality of life following the removal of the quality of the pressures of the ten in the world who have improved their score most significantly in 2022 they are European (the exception is Los Angeles), with the Germans Frankfurt, Hamburg and Düsseldorf in the lead. The improvement in Athens was also significant, gaining 19 positions.
The rankings of the great European capitals are often conditioned by traffic and crime problems, but Paris still manages to climb to 19th place in the world, while London is 33rd, Barcelona 35th, Madrid 43rd. The survey includes Milan and Rome: the first is at number 49 in the standings, Rome a few places behind, but with not too dissimilar values.
The general trend compared to the survey of 201 is an increase in the livability level, due to concerts in the limitation of restrictions for the pandemic (cinema, and sporting events): dominated by cities of New Zealand, Australia and Japan, now in decline, while the bottom of the classification is permanently occupied by Damascus (Syria), Lagos (Nigeria), Tripoli (Libya), Algiers (Algeria) and Karachi (Pakistan).