Liveable, but on whose terms?

New index ranks Siingapore much higher than other indexes on liveability
Tan Hui Yee, Straits Times 24 Jul 10;

SINGAPORE loves international yardsticks. And it's nice when the nation does well in global league tables.

So, there will be broad smiles that it did well recently in an index of liveable cities. But before popping the bubbly, it's timely to look at how rankings are arrived at in the first place.

Singapore's Centre for Liveable Cities commissioned a new Global Liveable Cities Index (GLCI). The study has not been completed, but tentative findings show that Singapore is the third most liveable city in the world, behind Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland.

The index was a subject of discussion at the World Cities Summit which concluded here recently and has been drawing interest. The Swiss-Singapore designed index, touts itself as a 'more comprehensive and balanced' study compared with other rankings.

Other prominent efforts to rank cities include The Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Report on living conditions in 140 cities. Human resource firm Mercer's Quality of Living survey covers 221 cities. And there is current affairs magazine Monocle's Top 25 Most Liveable Cities.

Are these reports less complete or balanced than the new one? It would seem so if one considers that all three studies largely target the expatriate market. The Economist and Mercer reports are designed to help organisations calculate allowances for staff on overseas postings, while Monocle's speaks directly to globally mobile professionals in search of the good life.

So apart from the usual items like hospital services and pollution, Mercer's study also looks at whether alcohol and cars are easily available, while the Economist assesses the 'discomfort of climate to travellers'.

Monocle clocks sunshine hours and subjects cities to its 'chain store pollution' test. This measures the ratio of international brand food outlets and retailers to the total mix. Presumably, the more Zara fashion stores and Starbucks cafes, the less desirable a city is.

The trouble is that the values and preferences in these studies do not apply to everybody. After all, some would ask, why is access to alcohol such a big deal?

Yet Singapore officials have referred to such rankings as yardsticks of progress. For example, when Singapore, ranked 28th on Mercer's list, it was said the nation should aim to join cities like Zurich, Vienna and Vancouver in the top 10.

The Swiss-Singapore team behind the new index has set its sights elsewhere. For one thing, it examines not just topline cities like Madrid, Bangkok and Singapore, but emerging ones such as Chongqing in China and Ahmedabad in India.

When completed, the index will allow simulations by mayors to let them find out how their city's ranking can go up if it improved upon, say, sanitation.

But it remains to be seen if the index can stake its claim to be more 'balanced'. A liveable city, according to its authors, has to be well-governed, economically vibrant, environmentally friendly, stable, diverse and provide a good quality of life. To measure that, it takes into account aspects like 'economic openness', 'demographic burden', and 'diversity and community cohesion'.

The rankings are based on 85 indicators - but the authors decline to disclose what these are. They do, however, plan to strengthen it with field surveys.

From what has been discussed so far, the index is not without its quirks. Professor Woo Wing Thye, an economist at the University of California at Davis, has wondered if hotel occupancy rates, one of the indicators it uses to measure economic openness, is all that important.

What is unclear too, is whether the index will follow the path of the Mercer and Economist studies to take into account levels of censorship and press freedom - an area Singapore often scores badly in, affecting its placing in these two surveys.

This is a touchy issue in Singapore, which was ranked 133 out of 175 countries in press freedom last year by non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders. Singapore's official policy, in the words of Law Minister K. Shanmugam, is to 'ignore the criticisms which make no sense'.

Then there is the question of whether the new index will take into account each society's tolerance of difference, which features prominently in Monocle's survey.

A relatively poor showing in the 'tolerance of other lifestyles, be they gay or otherwise' was cited by Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brule as the reason Singapore slid from 17th to 22nd position in its 2008 rankings.

Singapore's current third place ranking in the new index stands in stark contrast to what it achieved in the Economist's (54), Mercer's (28) and Monocle's (18) surveys. Given this disparity, cynics may think the GLCI was designed to put Singapore in the best possible light. But the real picture is rather more complex.

According to previous reports, some areas of study like water management had to be left out because there was insufficient data in many other cities. Omitting it probably lowered Singapore's performance in environmental protection.

A good survey depends on the availability of data comparable across countries. Yet if it relies solely on indicators that can be backed up by hard data, it may become an index that merely sizes up the hardware of cities. That in itself is not a bad thing, as long as the index is explicit about this conceptual bias.

Understanding the latent bias in such surveys, both policymakers and laymen should guard against lapping up glowing city rankings without question.

The new index ought to be strengthened, if it is to become an authoritative report that puts Singapore on the global map as a centre for research on liveability.

For all the buzz around 'liveability', it remains a contested term. Some planners consider culture and community important components, but both have yet to be measured in an objective and reliable form in existing studies.

Still, the new index should not shy away from these areas because of their subjective or contentious nature.

After all, while the hardware can draw people to a city, it is often the intangibles that keep them there.