Vienna has retained its place as the world’s best city to live and Baghdad is the worst, an annual global survey showed on Tuesday wherein Hyderabad has topped the charts among the Indian cities.
Ranked 138th globally by the Mercer report, Hyderabad beat Pune (145th) to the top spot in India and left India’s IT hub Bengaluru (146th), Chennai (151st), commercial capital Mumbai (152nd) and India’s political capital New Delhi (154th) behind in the quality of living sweepstakes.
Switzerland’s Zurich, New Zealand’s Auckland, Germany’s Munich and Canada’s Vancouver followed Vienna – which reached the best position for the seventh time in a row – in the top five of most pleasant cities to live in. However, none of the Indian city has managed to find a place among the top-100.
Mercer’s survey also identifies the personal safety ranking for the full list of cities; it is based on internal stability, crime figures levels, performance of local law enforcement, and the home country’s relationship with other countries.
“Indian cities have not made much progress on the quality of living scale, scoring nearly the same as they did last year. However, over time, Hyderabad has emerged as a city of choice due to factors such as improved options for international schools. Additionally, the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is located 22 km from the city and offers a good range of international flights, which improves its ranking on account of public services,” the release said.
In Asia, Singapore ranks the highest with 26th global rank. In Asia-Pacific, Dhaka (214) is ranked is the lowest. Mercer said the survey is aimed at helping multinational companies and other employers to compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments.