| Tokyo edges Singapore (2nd) and Osaka (3rd) again to take the top spot globally in 2019.Two North American cities make up the top ten, including Toronto (6th) and Washington, DC, (7th).The remaining top ten cities are: Amsterdam (4th), Sydney (5th), Copenhagen and Seoul (tied 8th) and Melbourne (10th).The 2019 edition of the index includes ten new indicators, of which eight are related to environmental resilience. The Economist Intelligence Unit today releases the third edition of the Safe Cities Index (SCI) at the Safe Cities Summit in Singapore. The index, which is the centre piece of a research project sponsored by NEC Corporation, ranks 60 cities worldwide across five continents. It measures the multifaceted nature of urban safety, with indicators organised across four pillars: digital, infrastructure, health and personal security. Cities in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region make up six of the top ten safest cities, with Tokyo taking the top spot for the third time in a row. Along with Tokyo, other APAC cities, as in the past, dominate the SCI2019. Singapore and Osaka come second and third, while Sydney and Melbourne also make the top ten. Toronto and Washington, DC, are the highest ranked North American cities in the SCI2019, with Washington, DC, entering the top ten for the first time. Overall, North American cities perform well in digital security, accounting for seven of the top ten cities in this category. These cities include Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Toronto. Vaibhav Sahgal, consultant at The Economist Intelligence Unit, says: “US cities continue to perform well in digital security as the government strengthens its cyber-security regulations, while Canadian cities tend to fare better than their US counterparts in personal security. None of the cities in the US make it into the top 20 in the personal security category—Washington, DC, only ranks 23rd, together with Shanghai.” The SCI2019 benefits from a major revision designed to better capture “urban resilience”—the ability of cities to absorb and bounce back from shocks—a concept that has had an increasing influence on thinking in urban safety over the last decade, especially as policymakers worry about the implications of climate change. The 2019 edition is the third, following the 2015 and 2017 iterations.The SCI2019 scores are not evenly spread, with a large number of cities clustered at the top, and the rest showing wider variation in scores. Just ten points separate the overall scores of the top 24 cities, while the following 36 are 40 points apart. The research shows that levels of transparency in cities correlate as closely as income with index scores. |
| Research shows that the performance of different safety pillars correlates very closely with each other, signifying that different kinds of safety are thoroughly intertwined. The top performers in each pillar are as follows: Digital security: Tokyo (1), Singapore (2), Chicago (3), Washington, DC, (4), Los Angeles/San Francisco (5)Health security: Osaka (1), Tokyo (2), Seoul (3), Amsterdam (4), Stockholm (5)Infrastructure security: Singapore (1), Osaka (2), Barcelona (3), Tokyo (4), Madrid (5)Personal security: Singapore (1), Copenhagen (2), Hong Kong (3), Tokyo (4), Wellington (5) The leading cities got the basics right, including easy access to high-quality healthcare, dedicated cyber-security teams, community-based police patrolling and/or disaster continuity planning. The accompanying SCI2019 report explores the index results, incorporating 14 in-depth interviews with industry experts around urban safety. Naka Kondo, senior editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit, and editor of the SCI2019 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. Our research shows the many ways that transparency and accountability are essential in every pillar of urban security, from building safer bridges to developing the trust needed for relevant stakeholders to share information on cyber-attacks. 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. Policies, service planning and provision should also take this into account—and this year, we have decided to convene stakeholders from around the world in a Safe Cities Summit to discuss such matters around urban safety.” |
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