Auckland’s Infrastructure Rated 92.9%

in Auckland Featured by Jon C — August 30, 2011 at 8:00 pm | 7 comments

I’m always a bit dubious about international surveys that rate cities.
In the latest one from the Economist’s “intelligence unit” Auckland rates number 10 in the world.
This will play into Auckland Mayor’s Len Brown’s hands as he strives to meet his new laudable mantra of Auckland being then world’s most liveable city.
But then maybe not.
The survey thinks Auckland’s infrastructure is nearly 93% out of a 100% which means we don’t need all those silly rail projects the Mayor keeps banging on about!

But even the world’s most acceptable city - Melbourne- rates only an acceptable when it comes to public transport according to the survey.

Sydney was 6th, Wellington was 23rd, Brisbane 21st.

For the first time in almost a decade of reporting, Vancouver is not at the top of the
ranking of 140 cities (Vancouver was in joint first position with Melbourne in the 2002 survey) and transport played a part in this.
A small adjustment in Vancouver’s score for transport infrastructure, reflecting recent intermittent closures of the key Malahat highway, resulted in a 0.7 percentage point decline in the Canadian city’s overall liveability rating. The unit says the adjustment is miniscule, and should not be considered significant in the context of the overall score, but it was sufficient to drop Vancouver to third position behind Melbourne and Vienna.
Melbourne now replaces Vancouver as the most liveable city in the survey. It says Vancouver’s overall score could see further downward revisions in future surveys following riots in June this year.

Seven of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, with population densities of 2.88 and 3.40 people per sq km respectively.
Elsewhere in the top ten, Finland and New Zealand both have densities of 16 people per sq km.
These compare with a global (land) average of 45.65 and a US average of 32. Austria bucks this
trend with a density of 100 people per sq km. However, Vienna’s population of 1.7m people is
relatively small compared to the urban centres of New York, London, Paris or Tokyo.

And here are the places to avoid:

This is the Economist Intelligence Unit’s explanation of its methodology.

“The liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location, and allows for direct comparison between locations.
Every city is assigned a rating of relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across 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.
For qualitative indicators, a rating is awarded based on the judgment of in-house analysts and in-city contributors. For quantitative indicators, a rating is calculated based on the relative performance of a number of external data points.The scores are then compiled and weighted to provide a score of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.
The liveability rating is provided both as an overall score and as a score for each category. To provide points of reference, the score is also given for each category relative to New York and an overall position in the ranking of 140 cities is provided.

Tags: Auckland Economist liveable city