Surat best to live in, Ahmedabad finishes close second: Survey

AHMEDABAD: Living in Ahmedabad and Surat is a blessing if one considers quality of life as compared to other major cities of the country. Or so the state government claims. On Thursday, the Gujarat information department in a press release claimed that Ahmedabad was runners up while Surat won at the Annual Survey of India's City-Systems ( ASICS) in different categories. The survey included 11 cities with sizeable population. The survey covered aspects like: urban planning and design, urban capacities and resources, empowered and legitimate political representation and transparency and accountability. These factors were defined as important issues related to the quality of life in a city. Indian cities have scored in the range of 0.7 to 4.5 on a scale of 0 to 10, across all four categories. The cities of New York and London were taken as benchmarks as they scored between 8.1 and 9.9 on the same scale. The average scores of Indian cities in each of the four categories was bound between 2.2 and 3.4. But experts who did the analysis claimed that there were wide variations in scores between cities within each category. Most cities were tended to be strong in certain areas and weak in others.