Economic Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Liveability Index 2019 that was released on Wednesday shows no improvement in Mumbai’s liveability. It has fallen to two places since last year to rank 119th on the list. The EIU said decline in Mumbai's rank was mainly due to a downgrade in its culture score
Even New Delhi, the Capital city of India has also dropped by six places to rank 118th on the list. For this EIU said it is because of downgrades to its culture and environment score as well as fall in the stability score owing to rising crime rates.
"This year we also note the demonstrable impact of the effects of climate change on liveability. Several cities, such as New Delhi in India and Cairo in Egypt received substantial downgrades on their scores owing to problems linked to climate change, such as poor air quality, undesirable average temperatures and inadequate water provision," the report said.
The EIU said its ranking of 140 cities is based on their scores in five broad categories -- stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.
“Increased concretisation results in rise in temperatures. Mumbai is so congested because of unplanned development that the only solution now is to develop the metropolitan region,” told AV Shenoy, from citizen group, Mumbai Vikas Samiti to Hindustan Times.
On the other hand, Pankaj Joshi, urban planner and executive director of the Mumbai-based Urban Design Research Institute believes that the same parameters for all the cities is not justice.
“If we look at it in terms of inclusivity, then cities like Mumbai provide livelihood to lakhs of individuals. Also, the population of all top 10 cities is way less than a city like Mumbai, to compare it on the same scale. Although there are issues concerning infrastructure and housing, we cannot look at Indian cities through a western lens,” told Joshi to Hindustan Times.
According to the surrey, Austrian capital Vienna is the most liveable city for the second consecutive year of the 140 cities surveyed. Vienna is followed by the Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Three Asian cities — Port Moresby (135th), Karachi (136th) and Dhaka (138th) — are among the ten least liveable globally.
With an overall score of 56.2, Mumbai has scored only 51.8 in the infrastructure category and 53.5 in culture and environment. Delhi has got an overall score of 56.3. While top-ranked Vienna has scored 99.1 and least-ranked Damascus (Syria) has got 30.7 points. A score between 50-60 points, which is the case for India, indicates constrained liveability conditions.
“In recent years liveability has generally been rising, thanks to improvements in stability and better education and healthcare provision in cities within emerging markets. But these improvements are under serious threat from an increasingly adverse climate," EIU's global forecasting director Agathe Demarais said.
(Inputs from PTI)
