Yahoo News and AFP report the findings from a new study of quality of life around the world (hat tip Dean Alexander):
Nordic countries take the greatest care of their environment and their
people, according to a ranking published on Thursday by the publication Reader’s
Digest. Finland comes top of the 141-nation list, followed by Iceland, Norway and
Sweden, and then Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Australia. …The United States comes in 23rd, China 84th and India 104th.The ranking combines environmental factors, such as air and water quality,
respect for biodiversity and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as social
factors, such as gross domestic product, access to education, unemployment rate
and life expectancy. The statistical basis is the UN’s Human Development Index and the
Environmental Sustainability Index drawn up by Yale and Columbia universities
and the World Economic Forum.European countries — again, led by Scandinavia — also top the Reader’s
Digest assessment of 72 cities for their quality of life. The criteria for this
include public transport, parks, air quality, rubbish recycling and the price of
electricity.The winner is Stockholm, followed by Oslo, Munich and Paris. Asia’s mega-cities fare the worst. At the bottom is Beijing, preceded by Shanghai, Mumbai, Guangzhou and Bangkok.
These rankings seem to jibe with the ones our team did for Flight of the Creative Class. I can’t seem to find a link to the original study. Please let us know if you locate a link.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:52 pm
I co-wrote the piece for Reader’s Digest. Relative to the typical urban economics journal, it has a few more readers! Here is the link.
http://www.rd.com/content/greenest-locations-on-the-globe
In a similar spirit to the Human Development Indicators work, we sought to build an index for nations and cities that captured 3 broad factors;
1. economic well-being
2. local environmental quality of life (i.e air and water pollution and other day to day public health threats)
3. global “good” environmental citizen (i.e nations and cities with a small ecological footprint that are producing relatively few greenhouse gases).
So my Los Angeles does great on #1 and even on #2 but not so great on #3.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
To Matthew: thanks for posting the link to your original article.
To Richard and Matthew: what would be your top 3 cities, personally?
Regards.
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I read the original article in the Reader’s Digest, but it is a very condensed article. I would be interested in knowing how cities in Switzerland rated in this study. Where can I get this information? Thanks.
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Matthew – Wow. Thanks for the link and getting in touch. We should compare notes sometime. R