The most and least livable cities of the world

Several charts are published each year collecting the cities with the most livable conditions from different aspects. The best cities always include Melbourne, Vienna and Vancouver. But there is little known about the cities you should not live in and where it is hard to even survive. Portfolio.hu examined the factors which can make cities rise on such lists or fall, or help them keep their ranks.

The most typical aspects that are examined concerning a city’s livability are stability, healthcare, culture, environment, education, infrastructure, security and traffic. Budapest usually ranks in the top half, but it mostly lags behind the cities of Western Europe. However, it is still in a far better situation than the bottom entries.

One of such charts contains 140 cities and it shows Damascus as the bottom entry, mostly “thanks” to the civil war.

The Syrian war, which has been going on since May 2011, caused the destruction of a large part of the country’s infrastructure and civilians are assaulted on a daily basis. Lagos, which is the second most populous city in Africa after Cairo, is one of the least safe city on the continent. The aftermaths of the Arabian Spring can still be felt in Northern Africa, causing the capitals of Algeria and Libya ranking low on the list. The fourth worst city is the capital of Bangladesh, where frequent terrorist attacks, lack of infrastructure and high congestion make everyday life a hell. After the capitals of Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia and Cameroon a European city, Kiev is the tenth worst city. The Ukrainian capital showed the most rapid relapse due to the conflict with Russia.