Mérida is among the ten cities with the best conditions to live in Mexico, according to the report Most Livable Cities of Mexico 2018, presented by the Strategic Communications Cabinet…//
Two municipalities of Nuevo León and the capital of Yucatan are the only ones that always repeat among the best of the five variables considered by the study, applied to 76 cities and 16 municipalies in Mexico City: quality of life, satisfaction with municipal services, evaluation of their mayors, social cohesion and if their inhabitants would recommend their city to live.
Consistently it is observed that the cities of the north of the country, some municipalities of Mexico City and Merida appear well evaluated in the different indicators.
“This indicates that the southern part of the country has the greatest potential for improvement,” said the study, which has been carried out for six years.
In the highest quality of life index, Monterrey-area municipalities San Pedro and San Nicolás are in places 1 and 2;
Guadalupe, also from that metropolitan area, appears in 5, and Monterrey in 8. Guadalupe is also the happiest municipality in the country: in a specific question on this subject, its citizens responded on average with a grade of 8.7.
Other northern cities stand out among those with the highest quality of life: Saltillo, Coahuila (place 3); Hermosillo, Sonora (4); La Paz, Baja California (6); and Cajeme, Sonora (10).
The only one in the south is Merida, in ninth place.
The average quality of life in Mexican cities is 64.41 out of 100 possible points, according to interviews applied to 30,400 citizens, 400 per city, between March 23 and April 14.
In terms of social cohesion, the country’s average is failing, of 5.67 on a scale of 0 to 10. The results in general are low, since the best evaluated place, which is San Pedro Garza García, has only 6.42 rating.
In this indicator it stands out that it is the only one in which Mexico City municipalities appear among the first places. Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juárez occupy positions 2 and 3, and Cuauhtémoc 7, in which it was considered that the social relations of the inhabitants are strong.
The list is completed by La Paz (4), Mérida (5), Colima (6), Querétaro (8), Hermosillo (9) and San Nicolás de los Garza (10).
Satisfaction with governments
The Strategic Communications Cabinet also measures the perception of the mayors, although only 39% of the citizens interviewed knew their municipal president in turn (this year there were local elections in a large part of the country, so at the time of the survey, many municipal presidents were substitutes because the holders asked for a license to look for another position.
“We emphasize that the population knows little about its local authorities and that it misses them”, warn the conclusions, since the average grade was 6.8.
In this indicator the municipalities governed by the PAN win, since among the 10 best evaluated, seven are under the command of the blue and white: Mérida (1), Chihuahua (2), San Nicolás (3), Reynosa (7), Torreón 8), San Pedro (9) and Aguascalientes (10).
There are only two PRI, Saltillo (4) and Mazatlan (6).
Another report indicator refers to satisfaction with municipal public services. In general, the service most valued by the inhabitants of the cities is garbage collection, which has an average rating of 7.5.
The two services considered worst are paving and the free internet offer, both qualified with 6.2.
The best evaluated are again San Pedro, Mérida and San Nicolás, followed by Mazatlán, Manzanillo, Colima, Chihuahua, Culiacán, León and Aguascalientes.
Would you recommend your city to live?
This year, the Most Livable Cities report includes a new indicator, called the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which depends on a single question: if the person would recommend someone move to their city.
The result is negative in general. By the way in which it is calculated, pondering how many people put grades of 9 or 10, minus the percentage of those who fail their city with a rating of less than 6, this index can go from +100 to -100, and the average result in the country was -27.
The most recommended cities, with around 30 points, are San Pedro Garza García, Mérida and Saltillo.
Text: Itxaro Arteta
