Hong Kong is the place to be – flawed surveys on ‘liveability’ have got it wrong

David Dodwell says Hong Kong surpassing Singapore in the latest liveability index may grab attention, but such surveys continue to undervalue our city, and often compare it to places where business professionals are unlikely to be sent

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The view of Victoria Harbour and Hong Kong’s downtown skyline as seen from The Peak in late May. Photo: Fung Chang

Published: 5:03am, 18 Aug 2018Updated: 5:03am, 18 Aug 2018

Few things get my hackles up like the annual cycle of global city rankings. I admit that this is partly because almost everyone seems to underappreciate Hong Kong, and consistently prefer its inferiors Singapore, Osaka and Tokyo.

I know I am blatantly biased. Having long ago selected Hong Kong as the single best city in the world from which to work – based on a lot of journalistic globetrotting – my own judgment is obviously being challenged. But I really do think I have a point. Scratch behind the headline rankings and methodologies behind most of these rankings, and you find they are shot through with ignorance and cultural bias – if their reports even let you glimpse into the methodology at all.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index, released this week, shows the best and worst forces at work. First is the very concept of “liveability” – though the report’s author, Roxana Slavcheva, says it is simple: “liveability … assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions”. The rating “quantifies the challenges that might be presented to an individual's lifestyle in 140 cities worldwide”. In truth, the concept is complex and vulnerable to a wide range of biases.

The report’s target is not a community at large, but international companies that have to send their executives to cities around the world, and need to decide how much extra cash they should offer to induce staff to go with their families to some of their more far-flung and challenging locations. Think Exxon having to persuade staff to commit to a two-year assignment in Port Moresby supporting their massive project in Papua New Guinea.

The EIU’s racy headlines trumpet that Vienna dislodged Melbourne for the number one slot, and that Hong Kong overtook Singapore to “recover” to 35th place (Singapore ranked 37th) because of diminishing fears over unrest linked to the “umbrella revolution” in 2015. But look at the footnotes and you see that 66 of the 140 economies surveyed achieve the 80-out-of-100 score needed to demonstrate that there are “few, if any, challenges to living standards”.

Staff push a passenger into a crowded subway train at the Ikebukuro station on the Marunouchi line during rush hour in Tokyo. Photo: Reuters