Barcelona: Highest Quality of Living in Spain
May 26th, 2010
According to the Mercer 2010 Quality of Living Survey, which covers 221 cities around the world, Madrid and Barcelona are the highest rated Spanish cities, both of which rank among the 50 best cities in the world to live, occupying positions 48 and 42, respectively.
Vienna is rated as the city with the best quality of life, followed by Zurich and Geneva, ranked second and third, respectively, while Vancouver and Auckland are tied in fourth place and Düsseldorf comes close behind in sixth.
European cities dominate the top 25 places, securing 16 of the top 25 positioned, while the worst European cities in the classification are located in Leipzig (64th) and Athens (75th). In the UK, London ranks 39th, followed by a newcomer to the list, Aberdeen in 53rd, Birmingham 55th, Glasgow in 57th and Belfast in 63rd.
Additionally, levels of quality of living continue to improve in Eastern Europe, with most index scores increasing slightly over last year. Prague is the highest-ranking city at 70th and its index score increased from 93.9 to 94.8 in 2010. Budapest follows in position 73 and Ljubljana is 77th.
Mercer conducts the ranking to help governments and multi-national companies compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments, the rankings being based on a point-scoring index, which stretches from Vienna with a score 108.6 at the top, to Baghdad with just 14.7 at the bottom. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, with an index score of 100. Living conditions themselves are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:
- Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement, etc)
- Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services, etc)
- Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom, etc)
- Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc)
- Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools, etc)
- Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion, etc)
- Recreation (restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports and leisure, etc)
- Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc)
- Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services, etc)
- Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)
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