According to the Mercer’s 2011 Quality of Living worldwide city rankings, Prague is again the best city for living in Eastern Europe.  The first three positions belong to Vienna, who upheld its last year’s leadership in the global ranking of cities with the highest quality of life, Zurich (Switzerland) and Auckland (New Zealand). The worst place to live in the world is Baghdad.

Prague was 69^th of 221 cities in the list, thus it remained the best ranked city in the region of Eastern Europe. It achieved a better result in the 2011Personal Safety ranking; together with Lisbon it was 47^th, closely followed by the Slovak capital Bratislava. The safest city in the world, according to analysts, is Luxembourg.

15 cities of the first 25 in both rankings are European cities, with Germany and Switzerland being represented three times in the top ten in the Quality of Living survey. Three Swiss cities have made it to the top ten in the Personal Safety ranking. Compared to last year, Prague improved its position; in 2010 it was 70^th.

At the bottom of the table were placed Khartoum in Sudan, the capital of Haiti Port-au-Prince, Ndjamena in Chad and Bangui in the Central African Republic. The last place belongs to Iraqi capital city.

The ranking exclusively on safety of individual cities is this year’s novelty. It was compiled by Mercer according to the criterion of personal safety based on the internal security, level of criminality, law enforcement and international relations of the country.  The second safest city after Luxembourg is Bern in Switzerland, followed by Helsinki (Finland) and Zurich (Switzerland). Vienna holds the 5^th position. Of all European cities, the last position in the Personal Safety ranking belongs to Tbilisi in Georgia. As well as in the previous survey, Baghdad occupies the last position in the list.

As for the world’s big cities, New York, which analysts used as a reference point, was 47^th in terms of quality of living. Similarly, London holds 38^th place, Madrid is 43^rd and Rome 52^nd in the ranking.

The ranking was compiled based on 39 criteria relating to the quality of life. Among other things, the consulting company monitored the political, social and economic environment, as well as the possibility of cultural activities or natural and ecological conditions.