Abu Dhabi ranked region's most liveable city, with Dubai a close second

The positions are partly attributed to the successful handling of the pandemic…

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an analytical arm of The Economist magazine has published a report ranking the liveability of 140 cities worldwide.

Research and analysis for the Global Liveability Index 2021 was conducted by the EIU earlier this year, and each city in the data set was designated scores for quality of life indicators including stability (levels of crime, threat of terror/conflict, and weighted at 25 per cent of overall score); healthcare (looking at quality of and access to healthcare, 20 per cent); culture and environment (mainly analyising climate, culture and corruption, 25 per cent); education (private and public access levels, 10 per cent) and infrastructure (for example quality of public transport, housing, telecoms and utilities, 20 per cent weighting).

The pandemic has of course had a big role to play in the results this year, with some cities climbing the table (in comparison with last year) as a result of their handling of the health challenges, whilst others dropped. Overall global liveability dropped by an average of seven points.

The top 10 cities included a strong showing for Australasia, Japan and Switzerland, with Auckland claiming the overall top spot and Osaka, Adelaide, Wellington, Tokyo, Perth, Zurich, Geneva, Melbourne and Brisbane following closely behind.

An article in the Khaleej Times, reveals the performance of two UAE cites: “Abu Dhabi’s ranking jumped 10 positions from 73rd in 2019 to 63rd in 2021 while Dubai was rated 74th, slipping four positions.”

A large factor in those strides up the table for the UAE capital is undoubtedly its handling of the pandemic, and like most of the cities in the top 10, tight border controls.

But the report warns that elsewhere, the impact on liveability will continue if governments are slow to react on policy areas like vaccination programmes: “The pace of recovery of liveability in most regions will be determined by how effectively the health risks of the pandemic can be controlled, through a combination of vaccination, testing, tracing and quarantine measures”.

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