Durban tops list of African cities
VIENNA, Austria’s grand capital on the Danube River, has for the eighth year running topped a list of cities offering the highest quality of life.
Violence-torn Baghdad is again said to be the worst place to live.
Top of the list in Africa was Durban, at 87, while Cape Town came in at 94.
The survey conducted by consulting firm Mercer of 231 cities uses dozens of criteria, such as political stability, healthcare, education, crime, recreation and transport.
Global centres London, Paris, Tokyo and New York City did not even make the top 30, lagging most big German, Scandinavian, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian cities.
Singapore was the highestranked Asian city, at 25, but was rated tops for infrastructure, while 29th-placed San Francisco was the US’s highest entry.
Vienna’s 1.8 million inhabitants benefit from the city’s cafe culture and museums, theatres and operas.
Rents and public transport costs in the city, whose architecture is marked by its past as the centre of the Habsburg empire, are cheap compared with those of other Western capitals.
Switzerland’s Zurich, New Zealand’s Auckland, Germany’s Munich and Canada’s Vancouver followed Vienna in the top five of the most pleasant cities to live in.
Baghdad was again ranked lowest in the world.
Waves of sectarian violence have swept through the Iraqi capital since the US-led invasion in 2003. Six years into Syria’s bloody civil war, Damascus was ranked seventh from bottom, with Bangui in the Central African Republic, Yemeni capital Sana’a, Haiti’s Port-au-Prince, Sudan’s Khartoum and Chad’s N’Djamena filling out the end of the list. —