The Global Liveability Index 2021 ranks Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka as the fourth least liveable city in the world.
Ranked at 137, Dhaka received an overall rating of 33.5 (100=ideal) in this year’s index.
The 2021 rank is a slight improvement for Dhaka, pushing the city one notch up the list of liveable cities.
The 137th spot was earlier held by Libya’s Tripoli in the index’s 2019 edition. This year the Middle Eastern city was named the world’s sixth worst metropolis for people to live in.
The list of least liveable cities in the world was topped by Syria’s war-torn capital Damascus.
It was followed by Lagos in Nigeria and Post Moresby in Papua New Guinea – the two cities ranked 139th and 138th in the latest index respectively.
The same index in 2019 ranked Dhaka as the third least liveable city in the world. In 2018, the Bangladesh capital was ranked 139th on the list.
The index was prepared by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and released on Wednesday.
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The research and analysis division of the Economist Group had to cancel the 2020 edition of the index after enforced lockdowns brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic prompted its in-city contributors and expert analysts to become unable to collect comprehensive, fair, and representative data for many of the cities.
In the 2021 index, Dhaka received 55 for stability, 16.7 for healthcare, 30.8 for culture and environment, 33.3 for education and 26.8 for infrastructure.
Meanwhile, among other Asian countries, only Pakistan's Karachi is among the 10 least livable cities – at 134th place.
This year, Auckland topped the Economist's annual survey of the world's most liveable cities, followed by Osaka and Tokyo in Japan, Adelaide in Australia, and Wellington in New Zealand, all of which had a swift response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has shaken up the rankings of the world's most liveable cities with metropolises in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand leaping ahead of those in Europe.
"Auckland rose to the top of the ranking owing to its successful approach in containing the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed its society to remain open and the city to score strongly," the EIU said.
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In contrast, European cities fared particularly poorly in this year’s edition.
"Vienna, previously the world’s most liveable city between 2018-20, fell to 12th. Eight of the top 10 biggest falls in the rankings are European cities," says the study.
According to EIU, 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 into an index and weighted to provide a score of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.
