Baghdad tops Mercer list as worst city in world to live

While Vienna continues to be the best place in the world to live, Baghdad holds onto its title as the worst.

Political turmoil, poor security enforcement and constant terrorist attacks have kept Baghdad at the bottom of Mercer's 2011 Quality of Living rankings for the last six years.

Coming in just ahead of Baghdad on the 221-country list are Bangui, Central African Republic (220), N'Djamena, Chad (219), Port-au-Prince, Haiti (218) and Khartoum, Sudan (217).

"Most of the low-scoring cities are in countries with civil unrest, high crime levels and little law enforcement," says Senior Researcher Slagin Parakatil on a YouTube video description.

Bangui, a city of 622,000 people, is the largest city in the Central African Republic. It has a history marred by mutinies and fighting and currently has an unemployment rate around 23 per cent.

N'Djamena is the capital and largest city of Chad with a population of about one million people. The most recent attack on the city was in 2008 by UFDD and RFC rebels.

Port-au-Prince, with a population of about 900,000, is the lowest ranking country in the western hemisphere. However, the true population count is difficult to measure due to the rapid growth of the city's slums. Port-au-Prince was devastated by an earthquake in 2010, which killed an estimated 230,000.

Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, was the site of the Black September hostage crisis in 1973, Osama bin Laden's former home, bombed by the U.S. in 1998 and most recently attacked by a Darfur rebel group in 2008.

For this year's survey, Mercer also looks at personal safety identifying the most and least safe cities in the world. Baghdad also ranked at the bottom of this list.

"Cities ranked at the bottom of the list do lack adequate infrastructure such as reliable portable water, reliable electricity or even public services," he says in an online video. "The continuing personal safety issue in Baghdad is a major contributor to why it is ranked relatively low in both of our rankings."

Other reasons for cities receiving low ratings are political and economic unrest, high volatility and terrorist attacks both on locals and foreigners.

On the other end, Vienna, Zurich and Auckland ranked at the top of the list with Vancouver being the top Canadian city in fifth spot. Vancouver fell from its fourth spot in 2010.

The lowest ranking Canadian city is Calgary coming in 33rd.

According to a press release, "Mercer conducts the survey to help governments and multi-national companies compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments."

(Reuters photo of Baghdad)