There are lots of ways to measure the livability of cities. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is one of the leaders in figuring out who's good at what. In a recent experiment, they held a competition that made their data available to outside researchers. Participants could tinker with the numbers to make certain indicators more or less important to give a unique view on what makes a city liveable.
The winner was Filippo Lovato, an Italian architect who produced the Spatially Adjusted Liveability Index.
"This added seven new indicators on 'spatial adjustments' to the EIU's ranking. Mr Lovato assessed cities' green space, sprawl, natural assets, cultural assets, connectivity, isolation and pollution on a scale of 1 to 5, and then gave the resultant combined score 25 per cent of the weight of his new index. The remaining 75 per cent derives from the five categories that make up the EIU's ranking: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure."
Lovato also focussed on larger cities, excluding perennial well-ranked cities like Melbourne, Vancouver and Vienna. The result? Toronto came in at #8, doing well on being green, but lacking cultural assets compared to the cities that beat it.
Hong Kong came in at #1.
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Original sources: CNN Go & The Economist