Monday 2 April 2007

Quality street . . . Dublin is the place to be

DUBLIN ranks near the top of the league of European cities when it comes to quality of living, according to a survey of major cities around the world.

The capital is ranked 8th out of 26 European cities, a survey conducted by recruitment consultants Mercer Human Resource Consulting reveals.

Dublin outranks London, Paris, Madrid and Rome when it comes to overall standard of living, taking into account such factors as political and economic stability, education, public services and transportation, housing and climate.

But we rank behind other major European cities, including Vienna at the top of the table, followed by Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Luxembourg, and Stockholm, when all 39 factors are taken into account.

On the world map, Dublin ranks 27th among 215 cities for overall quality of life, with Zurich at the top of the list and Baghdad at the bottom, outranking London, Paris, San Francisco, and Barcelona.

Despite the litter and the health care crisis, the survey ranks Dublin third in Europe and 20th in the world for health and sanitation. However, the ranking is based simply on access to medical supplies such as medicine and not on quality or availability of healthcare.

It also rates levels of sanitation on basic factors such as quality of drinking water, air pollution levels and the presence or absence of infectious diseases.

The Canadian city of Calgary is deemed to be the cleanest and healthiest in the world.

Overall, the survey found the cleanest and healthiest cities in Europe are mostly located in northern Europe

Allison Bray
Irish Independent

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