What makes a city liveable?

July 22, 2024

MANILA – What makes a city “liveable”? This is a question we’re often asked at the Liveable Cities project we run. Liveability can be a subjective matter for some—what you like about a particular city, for instance. However, there are actually some common standards which people use to evaluate whether a city is “liveable.”

Two reports came out recently on city rankings on a global scale. The first was the Oxford Global Economics Global Cities Index 2024 and the second is the 2024 Global Liveability Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister organization to The Economist magazine. Both measure cities in a slightly different way but are instructive in what it tells us about what features or characteristics matter in cities.

We share the same view as what Oxford Economics and other organizations think about cities. “Cities are the driving force behind our global economy. They are the engines for national economic growth, centers for education and innovation, and seats of government power,” according to Oxford Economics.

Their report tracks the Top 1,000 cities in the world in terms of economics, human capital, quality of life, environment, and governance. These five categories measure the attractiveness of cities to residents and investors. These 1,000 cities represent 30 percent of the world’s population but 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). Interestingly, 70 percent of these cities outperformed their own countries in GDP and employment growth in the decade before COVID-19 struck. This trend was consistent across countries regardless of their income levels. Cities in rich and poor countries tended to outperform their own countries. Not surprisingly, they also had more educated