Pakistan's Karachi Ranked Among 'Least Livable Cities', Here's the Top City in the List

Pakistan’s financial capital, Karachi, has been ranked among the world’s ‘least livable’ cities by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Dawn reported.

The organisation’s global livability index for 2022 has ranked Karachi at 168th position in terms of livability among 172 countries.

The other cities which have performed worst in the ranking are Damascus in Syria, Tripoli in Libya and Lagos in Nigeria.

The cities were ranked for relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories including stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

The scores of the cities were compiled and weighted to provide a score from 1 to 100 where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.

Karachi had the overall score of 37.5, while it performed poorly on stability indicator scoring 20. The Pakistani coastal city received 33 on healthcare indicator, 35 on culture and environment, 66 on education and 51 on infrastructure, according to the report.

Karachi’s poor ranking comes even as The Economist Intelligence Unit said that life in cities is a bit better than at any time in the past 15 years.

It isn’t the first time that Karachi has performed poorly in the livable cities index. Karachi ranked 134 of 140 cities in 2021, while in 2019, it ranked 136 out of 140.

The highest performing cities on the index are from Western Europe and Canada. Vienna, the capital of Austria, topped the list as it scored a perfect score of 100 on four indicators including stability, healthcare, education and infrastructure.

“Vienna, with its excellent mix of stability, culture and entertainment, and reliable infrastructure, tops the ranking for the fourth time in five years,” the report said.

Copenhagen in Denmark was ranked second while Melbourne was at the third spot.

“In all, nine of the top ten cities are small to mid-sized; all ten, and indeed most of the top 50, are in rich countries. Big cities with high levels of crime, congestion and density tend to fare less well,” the report added.

London was ranked lower by 12 places from a year ago and was at the 46th spot while New York was ranked at 69th.

Kyiv was not included in the list due to Russia’s invasion while the conflict influenced rankings for the Russian cities of Moscow and St Petersburg.

The two Russian cities recorded a fall in scores owing to increased instability, censorship, imposition of Western sanctions.