MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Montevideo chosen as the best city to live in Latinamerica

While Zurich is considered the best city in the world to live in, Montevideo in Uruguay leads in Latinamerica followed by Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile according to the Mercer Human Resource Consulting Quality of Living ranking of 215 cities taking New York as reference, with 100 points.

However in the top 50 Quality of Living cities there are none from Latinamerica, they appear in the seventies. As to the bottom of the list for the region we have Caracas, Venezuela, Bogotá and Medellín in Colombia and Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Mercer's overall ranking for quality of living has revealed that Zurich again ranks as the world's top city, with a rating of 108.1. The city narrowly out-ranks Geneva, which scores 108. Vancouver and Vienna follow in joint third place and score 107.7. Cities in Europe and Australia continue to dominate the top end of the rankings for overall quality of living. Auckland and Düsseldorf share joint fifth place and score 107.3 points. Frankfurt and Munich follow with scores of 107.1 and 106.9 respectively. Bern and Sydney both score 106.5 points and share joint 9th place. The analysis is based on an evaluation of 39 qualities of living criteria for each city including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services. Baghdad remains the world's least enticing city for expatriates with a score of 14.5. Other low-scoring cities for overall quality of living include Brazzaville in Congo (29.5), Bangui in the Central African Republic (30.6) and Khartoum in Sudan (31). "In recent years, the gap between low-ranking and high-ranking cities has widened. While standards have improved in some regions, there remains a stark contrast between those cities where overall quality of living is good and those experiencing political and economic turmoil" said Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer. Regarding health and sanitation ranking in the Americas, Canadian cities covered by the survey appear in the top 25 rankings for health and sanitation. Only a few Latinamerican cities figure just below the 100 points mark, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Panama City. "Growing traffic congestion, industrial plants and other pollutants reduce air quality in some American cities, which may undermine the otherwise pleasant living standards", said Parakatil. Cities in Central and South America tend to feature much lower in the rankings than those in North America. San Juan in Puerto Rico ranks the highest in 67th place with Mexico City scoring poorly at position 211 (37.7 points), followed by Port Au Prince is the lowest-ranking city in the region in position 212. The rankings are based on data collected between September and November 2006 and the data is regularly updated to take account of changing circumstances. Mercer Human Resource Consulting is a global leader for HR and related financial advice and services, with more than 15,000 employees serving clients in more than 180 cities and 42 countries and territories worldwide.