Dubai ranked Mideast's best for quality of living

Dubai has topped a list to find the city with the best quality of living in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The emirate was ranked 77th overall, an improvement of six places on its 2008 listing, in the Mercer 2009 Quality of Living Survey.

Globally, Vienna passed Zurich to take the top spot as European cities continued to dominate the top locations while Baghdad propped up the table of 215 cities.

Other regional cities listed in the quality of living survey were Abu Dhabi (84, up three places on 2008), Manama (111, up 11), Kuwait City (125, up eight), Riyadh (159, up four) and Jeddah (160, no move).

Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer, said: "As a result of the current financial crisis, multinationals are looking to review their international assignment policies with a view to cutting costs.

"Many companies plan to reduce the number of medium to long-term international assignments and localise their expatriate compensation packages where possible though the hardship allowance, based on quality of living criteria, will remain an essential component of the package."

The rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which saw Vienna score 108.6, and Baghdad 14.4.

Cities are ranked against New York as the base city with an index score of 100. Mercer's Quality of Living ranking covers 215 cities and is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments.

In a related survey, Dubai was ranked the 35th top city in the world for infrastructure, such as based on electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport provision, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports.

This was again the top ranking for a Middle East country with Abu Dhabi (72), Manam (110), Kuwait City (115), Riyadh (119) and Jeddah (139) also included.

Baghdad also came bottom of this list, which was topped by Singapore.

Parakatil added: "Infrastructure has a significant effect on the quality of living experienced by expatriates. While often taken for granted when functioning to a high standard, a city's infrastructure can generate severe hardship when it is lacking.

"Companies need to provide adequate allowances to compensate their international workers for these and other hardships."

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