Another “livability” survey was released this week ranking the world’s
cities according to their stability, infrastructure and services, and Jakarta
found itself once again toward the bottom of the list — though the Big Durian
did climb one in the ranks from last year.
Jakarta was ranked 118 of 140
cities in 2012’s Global Liveability Survey, which was conducted by the
Economist Intelligence Unit, an independent business within The Economist
Group, which publishes The Economist magazine.
“Livability is simple: It assesses
which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living
conditions,” the EIU wrote in a statement on its website.
Jakarta gained one place from 119
last year, putting the capital just ahead of Caracas, Venezuela; Al Khobar,
Saudi Arabia; Hanoi and Cairo.
But surveys, including by
organizations that try to use objective metrics such as the EIU, tend to be
subjective.
In an article from CNNgo in June,
writer Jordan Rane ranked Jakarta seventh in the “World’s 10 Most Hated
Cities,” which put the Jakarta
administration on the defensive. The Jakarta Tourism and Culture Agency quickly
pointed out that
the CNN article was an opinion
piece, not a scientific poll.
“CNNGo never conducted an
official study or survey,” Arie Buhiman, head of the agency, said in June.
“Just because one person commented, it doesn’t mean he represents hundreds of
millions of tourists around the world.”
The same CNN article also named
Paris, Sydney and Melbourne as some of the world’s “worst cities.” By
comparison, EIU has ranked Melbourne as the No. 1 most livable city for the
last two years.
“Trying to rank the world’s best
cities is like trying to quantify the finest mother on mother’s day — most of
us have a biased interest,” one writer wrote in The Economist in a June
article, “The Best City in the World — Live and Let Live.”
The EIU survey originated as a
way for corporate human resource departments to access the conditions of cities
where they were sending their relocated expatriate employees. A ranking system
told administrators if they needed to “assign a hardship allowance as part of
expatriate relocation packages,” EIU said.
But EIU’s survey, and the metric
of “livability,” has since evolved into a tool that can be used by
municipalities.
EIU used a scale from 1–100, with
one considered the lowest and most intolerable living conditions and 100
considered excellent. In addition to stability, infrastructure and services,
EIU also measured population density, air quality, connectivity and green
space.
By these measuring sticks,
Jakarta’s livability fared poorly in the global benchmark. Melbourne had a
score of 97.5, Jakarta came in at 54.6 and Dhaka, Bangladesh, was dead last at
38.7.
According to The Economist, even
EIU’s measurements can be deceiving.
The Economist reported that EIU
partnered with BuzzData, an information sharing forum that helped encourage
user participation in ranking cities, and suggested that it may be best to take
statistics with a grain of salt.
“The new indicators themselves
are clever but perhaps overly laden with values that do not lend themselves to
quantifiable comparisons,” The Economist wrote in June. “What “sprawl” means in
Memphis (a grimy over-extension of the city) is different than Tokyo (an
orderly expansion of the world’s biggest metropolis).”
Tim Henry
Business & Investment Opportunities
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