It’s getting harder to live in America’s largest cities.
Recently, the Economist published a series of graphics showing how the quality of life in American cities has fallen over the past 10 years. The graphics use data from the 2017 Global Livability Ranking, which is published by the Economist Intelligence Unit–a research and analysis company that creates multiple global rankings on topics like cost of living and democracy. The company’s research on livability in 2017 shows that while livability has risen for the first time since 2007 globally, American cities aren’t doing so well.
The ranking rates livability based on a city’s crime and conflict, access to healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, using a qualitative scale from acceptable to intolerable. Each city’s scores on 30 different factors, which are determined by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s analysts and field correspondents, are then weighed and boiled down into a single score between 1 and 100 (100 being the best).
The Economist’s map shows the changes in livability in cities all over the world, both positive and negative. Honolulu is the only American city to have improved its livability rating since 2007. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle have all worsened in this time frame, with Washington, D.C., remaining neutral.