How do the world’s cities measure up?

The Economist’s system doesn’t judge on things most of us actually care about.

Melbourne lost its “most liveable city” title last week and is confronting being runner-up to Vienna after seven years at the top.

And Auckland, too, has taken a hit in the liveable city stakes; dropping from eighth to 12th on The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index. The City of Sails had been in the top 10 since 2009.

These index “assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions”.

But the tool was actually designed to help companies decide how much “hardship” allowance they would need to pay employees who relocate. So, The Economist suggests that none of the top cities — including Melbourne, Vienna and other Australian cities — need a hardship allowance at all. But it recommends a 20 per cent allowance for cities at the bottom of the ranking like Port Moresby, Tripoli and Karachi.

Despite the hype, the Global Liveability Index focuses on things that matter to expats, not citizens. This is different to what is important to the average person living in Vienna, Melbourne or any other city — such as housing affordability, walkability, access to public transport and education, and the number of bike paths.

The Economist’s Global Liveability Index uses 30 indicators to measure five categories of liveability: stability (safety), health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. And 26 of the indicators are based on the “judgement of in-house expert country analysts and a field correspondent based in each city”.

These unknown critics score a city as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.

There is no freely available information about the qualifications of these judges, why the categories were chosen to represent liveability, or how indicators in a category are weighted. While the summary report is free, a more detailed report will set you back US$620 and the actual data sets a smooth US$9,210, which we didn’t purchase. Our comments are based on the freely available information.

It appears that, beyond the welldesigned league tables and flurry of media