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Dhaka second least liveable city: EIU

Its score poor in healthcare, infrastructure


FE Report | August 15, 2018 00:00:00


Dhaka has been ranked as the second least liveable city in the world, mainly due to unavailability of adequate infrastructure, according to the latest survey of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The London-based forecasting and advisory service provider of the Economist Group initiated the global survey, covering 140 cities across the world.

According to the survey findings, Dhaka has been positioned just above the war-torn Syrian capital Damascus in the ranking.

For the first time in the survey's history, Austria's capital - Vienna - has emerged as the most livable among the cities, surveyed by EIU. The city with 99.1 points has overtaken Melbourne (98.4 points).

Other top livable cities are - Osaka of Japan (97.7), Calgary of Canada (97.5), Sydney of Australia (97.4) and Vancouver of Canada (97.3).

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, EIU said.

Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.

Dhaka's overall score was 38 out of the possible 100 in the survey. Categorically, Dhaka scored 50 in stability, 41.7 in education, 40.5 in culture and environment, 29.2 in healthcare and 26.8 in infrastructure.

"Unavailability of adequate infrastructure is also responsible for many of the lowest scores. This is particularly visible in the ranks of cities like Dhaka (Bangladesh, 139th), Harare (Zimbabwe, 135th), Douala (Cameroon, 133rd) and Dakar (Senegal, 131st)," EIU also said.

Apart from Damascus and Dhaka, Lagos of Nigeria (38.5 points) has been ranked as the third least livable city, Karachi of Pakistan (40.9) fourth and Port Moresby of Papua New Guinea (41) fifth in the ranking.

The livability ranking considers that any city with a rating of 80 or more will have few, if any, challenges to living standards. Any city with a score of less than 50 will see most aspects of living severely restricted.

It opines that crime, civil unrest, terrorism or war plays a strong role in the ten-lowest scoring cities.

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