The fact that Barcelona is such a safe and peaceful city earned it a top ranking in this week’s Economist Magazine’s study ‘The Safe Cities Index 2015’, ranking 15th in the world, and beating the Spanish capital Madrid which came in at number 21.
Asia triumphs in the study, with Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka taking the first three places.
The study looks at 50 of the world’s most important cities and gives a position to each city based on four criteria. These are:
- Personal security, including illegal activity and the prevalence of violent crime.
- Infrastructure – taking into account the quality of roads, traffic accidents and pedestrian deaths annually, deaths from natural disasters and the percentage of the population living in slums.
- Health, this takes into account the proportion of hospitals in relation to the size of the population as well as life expectancy.
- Digital security – cyber crime vulnerabilities such as identity theft and online fraud.
Barcelona and Madrid both ranked highly for health, obtaining the seventh and eleventh places respectively. The Catalan capital also gained a good rating in public safety, with eleventh position overall; the European third behind Stockholm and Amsterdam.
