The fourth consecutive time AUH has topped the table…

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an analytical arm of The Economist magazine has published a report ranking 60 worldwide cities in order of safety.

Research and analysis for the Safe Cities Index 2021 was conducted by the EIU earlier this year, and each city being looked at was asigned scores for their relative safety.

Cities rack up points for their performance across 76 separate indicators of urban safety, which can be broadly grouped under the following five categories of safety: personal, health, infrastructure, digital, and environmental security. Everything from pollution to crime rates is looked at before scores are allocated.

Abu Dhabi scored ‘Very High’ in health and infrastructure security. Unsurprising really, if anything the pandemic has only served to highlight just how effective, well-equipped and rapidly deployed the health services are in our emirate.

The capital wound up in 31st place overall globally but came top of the pile in the Middle East for the fourth consecutive time.

But which city came top globally?

Good old Copenhagen. As if to demonstrate the borderline Disney proportions of Canadian niceness, Toronto picked up the silver medal, And the rest of the list reads as you might expect, dominated by Australasian, North European, and New Asian cities.

  1. Copenhagen
  2. Toronto
  3. Singapore
  4. Sydney
  5. Tokyo
  6. Amsterdam
  7. Wellington
  8. Hong Kong
  9. Melbourne
  10. Stockholm

What can we learn from the list?

It’s not just about celebrating the Ws. Part of reason the EIU puts out reports like this is so those with city shaping power have the tools, and data to analyse a city’s inputs and outputs.

‘Outputs’ being how well a city is currently fairing in a certain sphere, and ‘inputs’ are the plans being put in place to improve aspects if city life.

Images: Getty