CNN Travel’s latest article on the world’s worst cities provoked a lot of citizens’ sense of pride and nationalism. With Tbilisi listed at no. 213 out of 222, several citizens took the internet to write posts of disapproval. The capital was the lowest-ranked European city last year as well.
A petition on Change.com, the web’s leading platform for petitions, has also been posted with more than 5,000 supporters for CNN to remove Tbilisi from the list. The petition was signed by foreign tourists as well, commenting about their admiration for the capital.
The list was compiled by Mercer, an American global human resource and related financial services consulting firm, based on “factors such as political stability, law enforcement, education and natural environment”.
The CNN article states: “Sure, there are some places that you probably wouldn’t want to live. But that doesn’t mean they’re not worth visiting”.
The 7 other cities mentioned in the article was Khartoum (Sudan), Sana (Yemen), Nouakchott (Mauritania), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), Conakry(Guinea) and Lagos (Nigeria).
Vienna, Austria dominated the top spot as the best city to live in. European countries seized 15 spots of the top 25 as the best cities in terms of quality of living that entails decisive factors such as stability and infrastructure.
Mercer’s statement about the issue said: “Mercer reviews 39 factors to come up with its ranking for each city. We have been doing this for many years and our clients trust the reliability and objectivity of our analysis. That’s the reason Mercer’s ranking is so widely used for this purpose. Mercer’s ranking might well be different if we were judging tourism appeal or quality of lifestyle for permanent residents. That is not the purpose of our analysis, and we make that clear in the report and in our press release.”
Mercer also reported that even though Tbilisi received this ranking, it has “witnessed improvement in internal stability this year”.
The Business Insider, The Blaze and CNBC included Tbilisi in the world’s most dangerous cities to live in, based on overall political stability and safety. The Blaze posted Tbilisi’s GDP per capita as 66th lowest, a 150 per 1,000 adult mortality rate, and population living on less than $1 per day as 13.4 percent. It also referred to the country as “one of the poorest countries in all of Europe” but said that it is “not as bad as the other cities on this list”.
Though education is one of the decisive factors, Tbilisi’s literacy rate is at 99.7% according to the CIA World Factbook. But every nation is attuned to some criticism in specific areas, even if the criticism is deriding. Whether or not such reputation is accurate, Tbilisi has yet to decide if the information and data collected through the survey represents an issue worthy of consideration and examination for the purpose of improvement.