OREANDA-NEWS. August 24, 2012. Tashkent took the 58th place in the ranking of the best cities in the world to live, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) of the authoritative British journal The Economist.

Earlier this year the Economist Intelligence Unit teamed up with data sharing company BuzzData to host a competition offering users the opportunity to combine data from the Worldwide Cost of Living and Liveability surveys with other sources to provide a ranking of their own.

In particular, this year’s ranking, along with the traditional indicators, reflecting the stability, quality of health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure, incorporates seven new indicators: green space, sprawl, natural assets, cultural assets, connectivity, isolation and pollution.

These spatial characteristics were evaluated for 70 out of the 140 cities in the Liveability index because of time and resource availability. The selection of these 70 cities was guided by population size and geographical distribution.

The final list of the top 70 included 30 Asian cities, 18 European cities, 18 cities in North and South America, 3 cities of Africa and one city representing each from Australia and Oceania. It is noteworthy that the region of Central Asia and the Caucasus were represented by only one city – Tashkent.

The Economist Intelligence Unit experts particularly appreciated Tashkent in terms of conditions for residents to acquire a quality education. According to this criterion, only 36 cities, located mainly in Europe and North America, received higher scores than our capital.

Along with this, Tashkent took the 48th place in the world according to its quality and accessibility of health care services. The capital of Uzbekistan also joined the leading 50 largest cities of the world for the quality of transport and communication infrastructure.