That is according to a new ranking from Deutsche Bank DB, -2.25% that analyzes prices and living standards around the
world to find the cities with the highest quality of life, as well as the most
expensive cities to call home.
This year, Zurich topped the list, moving up one
spot since 2018.
Coming in close behind were cities Wellington, New
Zealand and Copenhagen, as well as Edinburgh, and Vienna.
Deutsche Bank does not rank every metro in the
world, but instead focuses on those that are “relevant to global financial
markets,” the bank’s researchers explained.
The quality of life ranking is the “most
subjective” part of the report, the company wrote, because people have
different criteria for what makes a city wonderful to live in.
For example, Deutsche Bank doesn’t focus on
cultural, entertainment and social opportunities, for its scoring.
“Our study is not the definitive guide on the
matter but a good starting point for debate,” the authors, who used a
combination of crowdsourcing and surveying prices to create the report, wrote.
To determine the cities with the highest quality of
life, Deutsche Bank scored candidates on their consumer purchasing power,
regional crime and safety, overall quality of health-care availability, general
cost of consumer goods, housing affordability (which is calculated as a
property-price-to-income ratio), traffic congestion and commute times, overall
pollution and regional climate likability.
Zurich scored especially high on purchasing power,
safety and pollution indices.
Wellington was a standout in
property-price-to-income ratio, traffic commute time and pollution, in the New
Zealand capital.
And Copenhagen scored well for safety, health care,
traffic commute time and pollution.
Meanwhile, Switzerland’s largest city, Zurich,
ranks second in monthly salaries for the cities Deutsche Bank featured, just
behind San Francisco, which is helpful considering that Zurich also is
considered one of the more expensive places to live.
In 2019, the average monthly salary after taxes for
citizens of Zurich was $5,896, behind the $6,526 in San Francisco. (The survey
calculated salaries “net of taxes,” or after taxes.)
Zurich also has expensive rent. It ranks fourth in
monthly rent for a midrange two-bedroom apartment, at $2,538. That is just
behind the world’s most expensive: Hong Kong ($3,685), San Francisco ($3,631),
and New York City ($2,909).
Check out Deutsche Bank’s full report,
which also includes relative pricing of goods and services around the world.