Vienna retains the top spot as the city with the world’s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2010 Quality of Living Survey. Zurich and Geneva follow in second and third position, respectively, while Vancouver and Auckland remain joint fourth in the rankings.
Mercer conducts the ranking to help governments and multi-national companies compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments. The rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6 and Baghdad 14.7. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, with an index score of 100.
Mercer’s Quality of Living index list was revised and now covers 221 cities compared to 215 last year, which means direct trend comparison will not be possible until 2011. The new selection includes prominent capital and other major cities from across the world currently available in Mercer’s database and better reflects where companies are sending their expatriate employees in the current business environment.
Americas
Honolulu (31) is the U.S. city with the highest quality of living according to the list, followed by San Francisco (32) and Boston (37). Chicago and Washington share position 45 and New York - the base city - is in position 49. Newly added cities Philadelphia and Dallas are ranked 55 and 61, respectively.
In Central and South America, Point-à-Pitre, capital of Guadeloupe and new to the index this year, ranks the highest for quality of living at 62 [although at another place on the list it says it's 49th]. San Juan in Puerto Rico follows at (72) [also listed at 69] and Buenos Aires (78). Havana (192) and Port-au-Prince (213) are the lowest-ranking cities in the region.
So where are all the high ranking cities in the Americas? Canada.
Vancouver is (4), Ottawa (14), Toronto (16), Montreal (21) and Calgary (28)
American and Canadian cities also do well in the eco-ranking both globally and regionally. Calgary is (1). Why?
From the Report Summary:
“Calgary’s top ranking is down to its excellent level of service on waste removal, sewage systems, and water drinkability and availability, coupled with relatively low air pollution.”
The next eco-city on the list is Honolulu (2). The difference between Calgary and Honolulu is .6, six tenths of one point. Back to Canada for Ottawa (3) and finally Minneapolis/St. Paul at (4). Top 50 listed on the web page.
Other Regions
Europe
Europe has 16 cities amongst the world’s top 25 cities for quality of living. They are listed at the top of the post and the bottom of the post.
On the eco-city index, Nordic cities fare particularly well with Helsinki (3) the highest-ranked in the region, followed by Copenhagen (8) and Oslo in joint ninth place with Stockholm.
Middle East and Africa
Dubai (75) in the United Arab Emirates and Port Louis in Mauritius (82) are the region’s cities with the best quality of living.
In the eco-city index, most of the region’s cities rank below 100. The highest-ranking cities are Cape Town (30), Victoria (38), Muscat (48), Johannesburg (54) and Abu Dhabi and Dubai (in joint 65).
Asia Pacific
Auckland (4) retains its position as the highest-ranking city for quality of living in the region. Sydney follows at 10, Wellington at 12, Melbourne at 18 and Perth at 21. At 26, Canberra is new to the index. Singapore remains the highest-ranking Asian city at 28...
With a score of 138.9, Wellington (5) is the highest-ranking eco-city in the region followed by Adelaide (7), Kobe (9), Perth (12) and Auckland (13).
Overall Rankings
Top 10
Again, the base of 100 is New York City,
The list in the news release only shows the Top 50 but 221 cities being ranked. Of course, the complete list is for sale as well as profiles for each city ranked.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
