Harare has been named one of the 10 least liveable cities in the world by the Economist. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index 2018 ranked Harare number 6 from the bottom after scoring 42.6 points out of 100. According to the Index, the worst city to live in is Damascus, Syria with a rating of 30.7 while Vienna, Austria was named the most livable city in the world with 99.1 out of 100. According to the Economist, the ratings work as below.
Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location, and allows for direct comparison between locations.
Every city is assigned a rating of relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable. For qualitative indicators, a rating is awarded based on the judgment of in-house analysts and in-city contributors. For quantitative indicators, a rating is calculated based on the relative performance of a number of external data points.
The scores are then compiled and weighted to provide a score of 1–100, where 1is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. The liveability rating is provided with both as an overall score and as a score for each category. To provide points of reference, the score is also given for each category relative to New York and an overall position in the ranking of 140 cities is provided.
Here are the two lists.
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