Osaka has once again finished above Tokyo in the Economist Intelligence Unit\u2019s (EIU) latest Global Liveability Index, released on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The annual index, which assesses 173 cities based on 30 indicators, scores cities across five major categories: healthcare, stability, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Osaka remained in seventh place in the index, while Tokyo, which improved its culture and environment score, moved up three places from its previous ranking\u00a0into 10th place.<\/p>\n
In most categories, the two Japanese cities were evenly pegged, but Osaka\u2019s infrastructure earned higher marks than Tokyo\u2019s.<\/p>\n
While both cities have \u201cexcellent services, excellent quality of life,\u201d according to Akshay Rathi, senior data analyst and head of livability for EIU, Osaka\u2019s position came down to accessibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not just assess livability by the availability of things, we assess this by \u2026 the quality of services delivered to the people,\u201d he said, noting that larger cities may possess more hospitals, but this could still mean longer wait times and shorter appointments, leading to an overall lower quality of healthcare.<\/p>\n
Availability of high quality housing also supported Osaka in outranking Tokyo, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But \u201cTokyo does have a little bit of an edge in terms of its culture and environment,\u201d Rathi said.<\/p>\n
At the top end of the index, Copenhagen retained its position as world\u2019s most livable city, scoring full marks in a number of categories, followed by Vienna and Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Asia was \u201cthe most improved region this year,\u201d according to a release by the EIU.<\/p>\n
Rathi noted that Asia possesses a number of \u201cdeveloping\u201d cities, which have been continuously investing in their public infrastructure, giving them room to make gains in the index.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, the benefits of (that investment) have started showing,\u201d he said, noting this was particularly pronounced in the quality of healthcare available in Chinese cities \u2014 all 19 cities ranked in the index improved their healthcare scores.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, culture and environment scores in most Chinese cities remain low, owing to restrictions on political freedoms, limiting further gains in their rankings,\u201d the index said.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the scores of Singapore and Hong Kong, in 26th and 44th place, respectively, remained unchanged due to a \u201cbottleneck in culture and environment due to strictly curtailed political freedoms,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n
But there were declines, too, with this particularly visible in the Middle East as a result of the Iran war, with 18 cities in the Middle East and North Africa region dropping by an average of more than three places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Osaka has once again finished above Tokyo in the Economist Intelligence Unit\u2019s (EIU) latest Global Liveability Index, released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13204,8,16178,85,2787,52],"class_list":["post-54266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tokyo","tag-cities","tag-japan","tag-living-in-japan","tag-osaka","tag-surveys","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}