Taipei is the 27th-most liveable city in the world, according to this year’s Global Liveable Cities Index released on Tuesday in Singapore, which ranks 64 cities around the globe.
Geneva, Switzerland, topped the rankings, in which seven of the top 10 most liveable cities are in Europe and only two are in Asia — Singapore in third place once again and Hong Kong in eighth.
Auckland, New Zealand rounds out the top 10.
Thirty-sx Asian cities were surveyed and seperately ranked.
Taipei ranked sixth in Asia after Singapore, Hong Kong and the Japanese cities of Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama.
The index, conducted by the Asia Competitiveness Institute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, covers 64 European, Asian, Middle Eastern, North and South American cities.
It is based on five categories: economic vibrancy and competitiveness; environmental sustainability and friendliness; domestic security and stability; social cultural conditions; and political governance.
The study was first commissioned by Sinagpore’s Centre for Liveable Cities in 2008, but the first report was not published until last year.
The institute has said its index is more representative of ordinary residents’ concerns when compared with other rankings that typically measure either a city’s world “clout” or its comfort level, because it does both.
A major difference is that the index uses indicators that apply to ordinary residents earning the median income, instead of expatriates or the social elite.
Taipei placed 24th in economic vibrancy and competitiveness, 30th in environmental sustainability and friendliness, eighth in domestic security and stability, 33rd in social cultural conditions and 25th in political governance.
However, the results for Taipei show a huge gap compared with this year’s Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Global Liveability Survey released in August, which put Taipei in 61st place in the world.
The EIU’s survey assesses living conditions in the 140 cities it ranked, scoring each one on more than 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure.
Melbourne, Australia, topped the EIU’s survey for the third consecutive year, followed by Vienna, Vancouver and Toronto.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS