The parameter of ‘Quality of Life’ contains indicators that measure the benefits of living in each city and residents’ wellbeing, covering financial and health outcomes, as well as access to amenities. When ranked on basis of quality of life, the financial capital of India ranked 915 while the national capital ranked 838. The IT hub, Bengaluru, was given 847 while Hyderbad got 882.
Meanwhile, cities like Kochi and Thrissur have flared better than the major cities of India. Kochi was given 765 while Thrissur in Kerala got 757.
Despite ranking lower in the parameter of quality of life, Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru have secured higher overall positions compared to Indian cities that outperformed them in this aspect. Mumbai stands at 427, Delhi at 350, and Bengaluru at 411 in the overall rankings.
The Oxford Index has ranked New York at the top of list, followed by London, San Jose, Tokyo and Japan.
What lies ahead?
Looking ahead to the coming years, the index claims that there are several global trends that have the potential to disrupt these rankings. “An uneven economic outlook across regions and lingering inflationary concerns could negatively impact the Economics score of many locations. Along similar lines, debt sustainability continues to be an issue for many developing countries following the Covid-19 pandemic and a period of heightened interest rates, which further threatens the economies of cities in these countries,” the Oxford Index in the report noted. How was the report created?
The Oxford Economics Global Cities Index have used five categories such as Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment, and Governance to rank the cities.
“After we collected data for each indicator for all cities, we created a normalised score for each indicator by assigning the highest-scoring city a score of 100 for that indicator, the lowest-scoring city a score of 0, and distributing the rest of the cities’ scores across that range. We combined the scores for each indicator within a category to create a total score for that category for each city. We then normalised the total score for each category, and calculated the city’s final overall score by taking a weighted average of each category’s normalised score,” said the report.
The report evaluates cities across five categories with differing weightage. The overall city ranking is determined by Economics (30%), Human Capital (25%), Quality of Life (25%), Environment (10%), and Governance (10%).