Fun_People Archive
16 Nov
(fwd) Living is good in Vancouver, Geneva, bad in Moscow (fwd)

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 96 10:50:00 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: (fwd) Living is good in Vancouver, Geneva, bad in Moscow (fwd)

Forwarded-by: Lani Herrmann <lanih@info.sims.berkeley.edu>
Forwarded-by: jmichael@sas.upenn.edu

	 GENEVA (Reuter) - Vancouver and Toronto in Canada and Zurich
and Geneva in Switzerland are the best cities for expatriates to
live, while Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent and Bosnia's Sarajevo
are the worst, a new survey said Thursday.
	 Russia's chaotic capital Moscow, where mafia groups are
flourishing and crime is soaring, was the fourth worst city to
live in Europe, lagging only behind the Ukrainian capital Kiev,
Tashkent and Sarajevo, the survey found.
	 However the quality of life has improved marginally in
Moscow compared with 1995, when it was rated Europe's worst city
to live.
	 The study, published by the Geneva-based Corporate Resources
Group (CRG), is widely used by governments and international
firms in assessing how to pay staff they send abroad.
	 Although it gave what it called world ratings for some
cities, CRG did not provide a complete global list, and a
spokesman said this was not available immediately.
	 Covering 161 cities around the world, including 21 surveyed
for the first time this year like Sarajevo and Tashkent, the
survey focuses on those quality-of-life issues that crop up most
frequently among executives and professionals.
	 It assesses factors such as political and economic
stability, crime, pollution, health, environment and education.
	 ``Sarajevo currently has the lowest quality of living rating
of all the cities in the sample ... Moscow, St.
Petersburg and Kiev also score badly on political stability,
personal safety and health issues,'' the survey said.
	 In the quest for the best places to live, four West European
cities were among the top 10 in the world, led by Zurich, Geneva
and Helsinki, which replaced the Swiss capital Berne in the
ratings.
	 The world's best two cities were in Canada -- Vancouver and
Toronto ``with a combination of social stability, excellent
infrastructure and good leisure facilities.''
	 In the United States, the highest quality of living was in
Atlanta, followed by San Francisco and Honolulu.
	 U.S. cities enjoyed political stability, availability of
consumer goods and high-quality medical services but lost out on
personal security.
	 In Asia and the Pacific region, Auckland in New Zealand
ranked as the fifth best place to live, followed by Sydney.
Tokyo, Osaka and Singapore also ranked high. The worst place to
live in Asia was the Burmese capital Rangoon.
	 Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa were the rated
the best in Africa, followed by Tunis, Tunisia, and Harare,
Zimbabwe. At the bottom of the regional league were Luanda,
Angola, Maputo, Mozambique, and Khartoum, Sudan, which were also
near the bottom of the worldwide rankings.
	 Latin America's southernmost capitals ranked high in the
regional league, led by Montevideo, Uruguay, Buenos Aires,
Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. San Pedro Sula in Honduras,
Port-au-Prince in Haiti and Cuba's capital Havana were the
worst.
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