Friday, April 25, 2008
City ranks 3rd in 'best places' list
DAVAO CITY -- After being named as one of the Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future, Davao City made it again as among the "Best Places to Live" in the country.
Business magazine MoneySense ranked Davao City as the 3rd city in the list, behind the cities of Bacolod and Makati.
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Completing the Top 5 are the cities of Marikina and Iloilo.
MoneySense is a bi-monthly financial magazine published by MoneyTree Publishing Corporation based in Manila. Its maiden issue was released in January last year.
Vice Mayor Sara Z. Duterte attributed this latest feat to her father Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte's unique style of governance.
"It is challenging for me as a public servant to maintain the ranking and hopefully improve it to a higher rank. (I am) happy that the Dabawenyos support our local government initiatives," the vice mayor said.
She added this recognition is truly good news because "despite the difficult turn of events, Davao City is still better off compared to other cities in the country."
Completing the list are the cities of Las Piñas, Pasig, San Fernando, Mandaluyong, Quezon City, Manila, Batangas, Cagayan de Oro, Muntinlupa, Angeles, Baguio, Lipa, Calamba, General Santos and Cebu, in that order.
Cities were ranked according to three components that magazine editors said make a place the best place to live: standard of living, quality of life, and cost of living.
But the ranking of the cities according to certain criteria is not new, as the magazine relied on two existing surveys to come up with the list of the best places to live in the country.
In a blog article entitled "There Is a Method to This Madness," MoneySense editor-in-chief and article author Heinz Bulos explained that the list of the Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project (PCCRP) of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center as well as the Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR) published by the Human Development Network, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), were major basis for the ranking.
The process, he said, was to first get the top 30 provinces, including Metro Manila, based on the 2003 Human Development Index of the PHDR.
He said from the 30 provinces, they identified the cities and municipalities classified by the National Statistics Office as first class in terms of income, ending up with 219 places.
From the list, they considered only those in the AIM study of the most competitive cities, which used seven key drivers of competitiveness, to wit: cost of doing business, dynamism of local economy, linkages and accessibility, infrastructure, human resources, responsiveness of LGUs, and quality of life.
However, Bulos said they only focused on three.
"There are three key components of what we believe makes a place the best place to live: standard of living, quality of life, and cost of living," he said.
"You may be earning a lot but if you live in an overcrowded city with too much smog, a high crime rate, bad roads, and few schools to choose from, then it may be a better idea to just move. Similarly, you can have fresh air, a peaceful environment, and longer life expectancy, but if you can't find good jobs or business opportunities, you'll also move," Bulos added.
"What is standard of living? To us, the factors to look at are income (above average family income and per capita income), economy (high GDP and GDP growth), employment (high employment rate), and business (low cost of doing business)," he said.
They picked the top 20 based on their average ranking, using those three criteria.
Councilor Peter Laviña, chair of the City Council committee on commerce, trade and industry, welcomed the news saying Davao's emergence in the top five is "another affirmation about the local government's efforts to improve living standards and quality of life."
In measuring a city's standard of living, the magazine considered factors like above average family income and per capita income, economy, employment rate, and cost of doing business.
Quality of life looked into population, demographics, environment, health care, education, safety, and leisure.
The magazine, however, did not bother to measure the cost of living because the data available were incomplete and unreliable, Bulos said in the explanatory note of the article.
Earlier this year, Davao City ranked 10th in the list of Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future, released by the Finance Direct Investment (fDi) magazine of the London-based Financial Times Group. (NCB/GLP of Sun.Star Davao/Sunnex)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro. (April 25, 2008 issue)
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