Asia three most ‘sustainable’ cities. And plenty that aren’t.

Singapore, Seoul in South Korea and Hong Kong are the three Asian countries to come out on top of the list of the region’s most sustainable cities.

The 2018 Sustainable Cities Index, conducted by Arcadis NV – an Amsterdam-headquartered global design, engineering and management consulting company – found that the three cities ranked highly in the scores given to ‘people’, ‘planet’, and ‘profit’, the three measures the index uses for ‘sustainability’.

The report gives points to 100 of the world’s most prominent cities. It also identifies ‘evolutionary cities’ and thirteen ‘fast-growing megacities’. The 10 ‘megacities’ were found to be at the bottom of the people index.

The megacities included those situated in the rapidly growing economies of China and India, which were subject to high levels of inward-migration, infrastructure investment and change.

“Cities like Mumbai, Shanghai and Shenzhen exhibit significant inequality in terms of income and access to resources and opportunity,” according to the report.

Of 23 cities in the sample, 14 are in the bottom quartile, facing significant challenges across all pillars, the report noted.

Read more about the report HERE.

At fourth place overall, Singapore is just behind European cities London, Stockholm, and Edinburgh. Asian Correspondent reports that the city state is highly ranked due to its high score in one or two pillars of the index. Like Hong Kong, Singapore are in the top 10 driven by very high ‘profit’ rankings and middle of the road ‘people’ and ‘planet’ rankings.

The index report noted that most of the top 10 cities had high ‘Planet’ scores – these are Northern European cities like Stockholm and, Frankfurt which have been highly successful in combining economic prosperity and environmental stewardship.

Read more about the Asian cities HERE.