Would you say Singapore is an exciting place? Sort of? Maybe? Welp, our garden city made it on the list of the 32 most exciting cities across the globe, according to this year’s Time Out City Life Index — but we pretty much had to be included, because the poll quizzed some of the cities that Time Out is published in.
So yes, Time Out was basically forced to put Singapore in the index, and the city-state probably wouldn’t even be in it if they had their way.
Anyway, after surveying 15,000 people all over the world about their cities, the lifestyle publication pronounced our Little Red Dot as the 31st most exciting city to live in and visit in 2018. Eh, not so great.
Scoring each city on criteria such as food, drink, culture, friendliness, affordability, happiness, and liveability, the rankings saw Chicago make it to the top, followed by Porto, New York, Melbourne, London, Madrid, Manchester, Lisbon, Philadelphia, and Barcelona wrapping up the top ten. Pretty standard findings.
Elsewhere in Asia, Shanghai took 16th spot for good public transport and safety, with Tokyo trailing behind at 19th place for its restaurant scene, and Beijing at 22nd for its friendliness, affordability, and safety (but most people said they didn’t enjoy living there).
At 24th spot, Bangkok rose up as the world’s street food capital with the most live gig-goers in Asia; while Hong Kong took 26th place with the best public transport system in the world (at least according to the locals), although it had one of the lowest overall happiness scores.
And that brings us to Singapore at 31st place. Apparently, we’re the worst rated city for culture, and second worst for drinking (Dubai took the crown for that one). But we did well in the realms of safety (of course) and public transport (debatable), and we were acknowledged for our “buzzier restaurant scene” compared to the other cities at the low end of the list.
At the very bottom, Istanbul rounded off the index with residents who think the city is “a rip-off”. Ouch — but hey, better them than us at the bottom of the barrel.
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