When traveling for pleasure, most people want to make sure that they and their belongings remain safe. That’s why we’ve posted so many “safety” related things here on YMMV, such as:
- Why your hotel safe is not safe (and what to do instead)
- Interactive map with the safest and riskiest places in the world for travel
- TripIt will now tell you the safety level of your travel destination
- The potential problem with modern-day pirates attacking cruise ships
- How easily it is to break into locked luggage with a zipper closure (and what to do about it)
To make things a little easier for everyone, The Economist has just released their list of the safest cities in the world. Some are, admittedly, not surprising but others might make you raise an eyebrow. Take a look:
The Safe Cities Index is a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, and is sponsored by NEC Corporation. It ranks 60 cities on five continents, examining factors in digital, health, infrastructure and personal security to assess overall safety in each city.
Published every other year since 2015, this is the third year that the index has been released.
The Top Ten
Numbers are, of course, just numbers; there are always stories behind them.
Washington D.C., for example, was #23 in 2017’s SCI, but apparently the researchers changed how the data was used to compile the index this year, which allowed it to jump an unusual 16 spots.
Hong Kong ranked as #3 for personal security. I suspect the index was compiled before the recent happenings in Hong Kong.
Six out of the top ten were from Asia-Pacific, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that area of the world is safer; just that those cities have specific strengths. Case in point, Yangon in Myanmar was #58 out of 60; Pakistan’s Karachi was #57 and and Dhaka, Bangladesh, was #56 – all are also from Asia-Pacific.
Naka Kondo, senior editor of the latest Safe Cities report, says, “Overall, while wealth is among the most important determinants of safety, the levels of transparency — and governance — correlate as closely as income with index scores. The research also highlights how different types of safety are thoroughly intertwined — that it is rare to find a city with very good results in one safety pillar and lagging in others.”
Economist Intelligence Unit’s interpretation & discussion of the index is pretty fascinating. To read a PDF of the report, as well as see the rest of the cities and where they are on the index, click here.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
