Zurich Ranked No. 1 for Quality of Life, While Baghdad Comes in Last
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Zurich has the highest quality of life among global cities while Baghdad has the lowest, according to a survey of 215 centers compiled by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
The survey scores cities on markers such as the availability of health care, the level of air pollution, and the presence of harmful animals before ranking them against New York as the base city.
Geneva came second in the so-called Quality of Living index, followed by Vienna, Vancouver, and Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, which also ranked top Asian city, Mercer said in a statement on its Web site. Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and the New Zealand capital Wellington made up the rest of the top five Asian locations.
After Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Calgary filled out the North American top five. Düsseldorf and Frankfurt were fourth and fifth-placed in Europe.
At the bottom of the index, Brazzaville in Congo, Bangui in the Central African Republic, and Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, scored the lowest after Baghdad.
