Toronto is the Best City in the World!

A recent study by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has concluded what many Torontonians have suspected and promoted for quite some time: Toronto is the best city in the world in which to live.

And if that doesn’t make the rest of the world take note of how well we’re doing, consider that Montreal ranked No. 2! Stockholm, Amsterdam and San Francisco round out the Top 5.

This is not some fly-by-night organization that just wants to hand out awards in order to get its name in media outlets. The Economist is a legendary newspaper/magazine that has been around for nearly 175 years, reporting on world views, globalization, economic trends, trade and tariffs. The EIU came into existence a century later, and for the past 70 years has been preparing market research and data analysis to help clients such as businesses, financial firms and governments better understand how the world is changing and how that creates opportunities to be seized and risks to be managed.

The Safe Cities Index 2015 report, sponsored by NEC, studies 50 cities based on an index of more than 40 quantitative and qualitative indicators split across four categories: digital security, health security, infrastructure safety and personal safety. The cities were hand-picked by the EIU based on the availability of data and regional representation.

The cities were graded based on things such as levels of spending and policy measures, and even such minutiae as frequency and severity of car crashes. It also took into account past rankings on things such as cost of living. Of note is that Vancouver, a city that has featured prominently in past EIU studies, was not considered for the final panel of 50.

Toronto took the Best of the Best without topping out in any of the categories on which cities were graded. In addition to an eighth-place ranking in the Safe Cities Index, its best ranking came in the EUI’s Livability Rankings and Business Environment Rankings, where it placed fourth. Other Top 10 finishes were garnered in the Democracy Index (8) and Global Food Security Index (8), but they were offset by a 70th ranking in the Worldwide Cost of Living. In fact, its Average Index Rank was 17th; Montreal’s was 23rd.

Night time in Yorkville - via Minto

Toronto eighth overall in the Safe Cities Index was earned as a result of being ranked seventh in Personal Safety, eighth in Infrastructure Safety, 11th in Digital Security, and 21st in health security. Tokyo was ranked as the Safest City in the World.

Some items on which the report touched were particularly interesting. Most notable is that urbanization (movement of residents to cities and away from outlying areas) is as high as 82% of the population in North America and as low as 40 percent in Africa, though the EIU expects that to trend higher over the next three decades.

And with increases in population come increases in risk from outside harm, such as terrorism and cyber attacks. Given the increases in technology across a broad range of services offered by most large urban cities, these happenings pose a threat to personal security (one of the most critical factors that goes into making a city great).

Although safety is of prime concern in cities in earthquake-prone zones such as around the Pacific Rim or volatile locations such as the Middle East, the report concludes that city dwellers in North America tend to feel less safe than they should. It therefore becomes the responsibility of city leaders to convey the safety measure to their cities’ citizens in order to change public perception.

In order to keep that perception of safety strong while still making the city attractive to live in, the EIU recommends investment is better spent on “social” systems such as intelligent street lighting, instead of “segregation” items such as gated communities.