OUR CAPITAL city Kingston could be such an attractive and pleasant place. The city has all the advantages of geography, sitting as it does on the spacious Liguanea Plains with a crescent of mountains north, east and west and the seventh largest natural harbour in the world as its southern boundary. The climate is excellent, and the city is culturally rich. Kingston is an open, low-rise city as the US capital Washington DC was designed by statute to be. There are lots of green spaces, albeit poorly kept in too many instances.
But despite these significant advantages, Mercer Human Resources, an international firm which operates in 40 countries and which produces an annual ranking of cities as desirable places to live and work, has ranked Kingston 132nd out of 215 cities surveyed.
This "quality of life" ranking is based on considerations of public safety, political stability, economic conditions, culture, personal freedom, schools, public transport and other public services.
We can take some comfort that we are 83/215 places from the bottom of the list occupied by Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. But we are 132/215 places from the top spot taken by Zurich, Switzerland, this year for the second time in a row displacing Vancouver, Canada, over traffic congestion. Some of the world's most visited and romanticized cities are much lower on the quality of life scale. New York is ranked 44th, London 39th, and Paris 31st. Interestingly, the highly ranked Scandinavian cities have lost ground over a climatic factor: the occurrence of seasonal affective disorder caused by short daylight hours.
These rankings are, of course, open to the usual errors of subjectivity and the attendant criticisms. But we know the problems which make Kingston less than being even a half-way desirable place to live. The matter of public safety is certainly high on the list. There are few places on the planet with Kingston's gun crime and murder rate. Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, has the status of being the most dangerous city in the Mercer survey.
With the public safety issue comes the personal freedom factor. As we all know, there are many areas of the city with an enter at your own risk label attached. And even major public thoroughfares can be blocked at will, or declared off limits by gang warfare.
Public services and economic opportunities leave much to be desired. The planning now under way for the resuscitation of downtown Kingston with its present low quality of life, offers a sliver of hope that the whole city, with its excellent potential, can be taken up the Mercer rankings.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
