Does a City’s Population Size Impact its Quality of Life?
City living isn’t everyone’s cup of tea—the world’s most populous cities especially can be hectic, noisy, and busy.
Yet, despite the chaos of urban life, cities offer inhabitants a number of comforts and conveniences that are harder to find in smaller towns. That’s why more people are moving into urban areas around the world.
But do these conveniences reflect in people’s quality of lives?
According to research compiled by Elaine Siu, bigger doesn’t always mean better—at least when it comes to population size. This interactive visualization takes a deep dive into this dataset.
Measuring Quality of Life
Siu uses data from Numbeo’s 2022 Quality of Life Index to compare the quality of life in nearly 200 different cities around the world. For the purposes of this research, Siu used cities with metropolitan area populations of over 500,000.
The index measures quality of life using eight different metrics:
- Cost of Living
- Purchasing Power
- Property Price to Income Ratio
- Pollution
- Traffic Commute Time
- Safety
- Healthcare
- Climate
A majority of the metrics (five of the eight) seemed to correlate with population size, suggesting that the bigger a city’s population is, the lower its quality of life in those metrics.
Here’s a look at the full list of cities included in the study, along with their overall quality of life scores and their metro area populations:
| City | Quality of Life Index | Metro Area Population |
|---|---|---|
| Adelaide, Australia | 212.14 | 1,355,522 |
| The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands | (Read more...) |
U.S.
China
Japan
Great Britain
ROC (Russia)
Australia
Netherlands
