Which city offers the best quality of life?
An aerial view of Sydney's Opera House and Circular Quay in the cities central business district Image: REUTERS
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:
International Security
It’s official: if you want to dramatically improve the quality of your life, move to Europe. That’s what the 18th annual Quality of Life survey from consulting firm Mercer suggests—cities in western Europe dominate the top of this year’s list of the world’s best cities to live in.
Only seven US cities made it into the top 50, and New York wasn’t even the highest ranked among those. Vienna was named the number one best city in the world to live in (again). Other German-speaking cities did well, too—Munich, Dusseldorf, and Frankfurt were all selected into the top 10, and Zurich (where a majority of the population speaks Swiss German) was ranked the second best city in the world to live in.
One of the key factors pushing cities to the top was personal safety, according to Mercer’s website. European cities did especially well on that measure: Luxembourg was named the top city for personal safety, while Bern, Helsinki, and Zurich tied for the second place. Some European cities—most notably, Paris—fell this year in the ranks because of terrorist attacks or social unrest. Baghdad and Damascus were ranked the world’s least safe cities.
Vancouver was the highest ranked city in North America; San Francisco ranked highest in the US; and Singapore topped the list in Asia.
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Related topics:
The Agenda Weekly
A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.
More on Economic GrowthSee all
Linda Lacina and Ian Shine
September 25, 2024
Spencer Feingold
September 25, 2024
Aengus Collins and Philipp Grosskurth
September 25, 2024
Spencer Feingold
September 25, 2024