Horizon Research released its Livable Indexes 2006 of Chinese Cities on April 23, in which Shanghai, Beijing and Dalian were listed as the top-3 inhospitable cities, while Sanya, Chengdu and Shenzhen were the top-3 hospitable ones.

 

Horizon started this survey in April, 2006, covering 2,553 respondents (all aged between 18 and 60) in 20 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Dalian and Jinan.

 

A hospitable city must provide abundant material sustenance to non-locals and a tolerant cultural life circle, in which everybody can acquire a satisfaction of life. In the survey, indexes related to hospitability included communications, job and educational opportunities, neighborhood atmosphere, and the marriage of non-locals' children.

 

All the top-3 inhospitable cities are well-known metropolises. That is to say, maybe big cities are not as good as they appear to non-locals, and urban planners in China might need to think about how to create a more harmonious environment in their cities.

 

(Chinanews.cn April 25, 2007)