These Are the Safest Cities in the World Right Now

A woman dressed in a yukata walk past souvenir shops in Asakusa, Tokyo. Photographer: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg

The city is where the population agglomerates and, therefore, space where the impact of social transformations on security must be analyzed. And, in this sense, we agree that the city is a space of risk. 

Clearly, today cities have to respond to the challenges of a new economic base, urban infrastructure, quality of life, social integration, security, and governance. Without a doubt, security policies are a challenge of great influence.

Now, it should be noted that there is a new surprise member of the safest city club in the world. Washington, DC, has entered the top 10 in the Safe Cities Index for the first time, while Hong Kong does not show up after plummeting in the ranking.

The safest cities

A new index that classifies 60 cities on five continents was created, examining digital, health, infrastructure and personal safety factors to assess overall urban safety. The cities that led the index to offer easy access to high-quality medical care, dedicated cybersecurity teams, disaster continuity planning and/or community-based police patrolling.

Naka Kondo, who is the editor of the latest Safe Cities report, expressed, “The research also highlights how different types of safety are thoroughly intertwined — that it is rare to find a city with very good results in one safety pillar and lagging in others”.

The numbers alone rarely tell the whole story, and the authors of the report point out a couple of issues to consider. The Washington DC catapult in the top 10 is largely due to changes in the data used to compile the index. And the 24 main cities in the ranking actually achieved very similar overall scores. From Europe, that list includes Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, and Stockholm; Among the cities in the United States that made the cut were San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

While Asia-Pacific is home to several of the safest places in the world, it also contains some of the cities with the lowest index score.

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Source: Sybilla Gross | Bloomberg