DAVAO CITY – A recent study among the 33 highly-urbanized cities in the Philippines revealed the City as second most liveable city in the country. The study was lifted from an academic dissertation done by Dr. John Vianne Murcia, specialist of the University of Mindanao’s Institute of Popular Opinion (IPO), with the intention to create a city liveability rankings exclusively for the Philippines, patterned from prestigious liveability rankings abroad. The study utilized data mining approach utilizing secondary data of 17 parameters clustered in four liveability dimensions of city liveability. The study relied on available data from multiple agencies, covering data on governance, social, economic, and physical dimensions, which served as bases in the liveability score generation using min-max standardization scaling procedure.
In the governance dimension, Davao City ranked 13th in terms of ratio of electorate to population and 9th in terms of the city’s Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) per capita. It has an overall score of 0.221 in this dimension, better than the cities of Manila (0.126) at rank 12 and Mandaue (0.083) at rank 13. Most liveable cities in this dimension are the cities of Makati (6.341), San Juan (2.755) and Mandaluyong (2.261).
In terms of social dimension, Davao City ranked 17th in fatal road accidents per 100,000 population, 1st in terms of crime index, and 4th in terms of public hospital bed capacity. Overall score for Davao City is 2.244, which is second to Mandaluyong (2.919) but fared better than Quezon City (2.228), Manila (1.501) and Pasig (1.107).
Davao City ranked 16th of the 33 highly urbanized cities in terms of economic dimension – 3rd in terms of ratio of households owning house and lot to total household population (1.617), 7th in terms of employment rate (0.754), 29th in terms of poverty incidence (-0.945), 23rd in terms of annual per capita food threshold (-0.497), and 23rd in terms of monthly income at minimum wage (-0.636). Economic score for Davao City is 0.291, with Marikina (6.079), Paranaque (3.472), Muntinlupa (3.228), and Taguig (2.750) in the top tier.
Under the physical dimension, seven indicators were used, subdivided into demographic and geophysical cluster. Davao City ranked 5th in terms of population density, 24th in terms of household size, 27th in terms of percentage of households with electricity, and 2nd in terms of percentage of households with own/shared faucet community water system. As to geophysical cluster, the City ranked 7th in terms of average city humidity, 2nd in terms of percentage of forest cover on total land area, and 4th in terms of national road density. Overall rank of Davao City is 3rd with 4.350, better than General Santos (4.055) and Puerto Princesa (3.862). Top cities under this dimension is Lucena (7.187) and Tacloban (5.029).
Taking all four dimensions into account, the most liveable highly urbanized cities are Lucena City, Davao City, Puerto Princesa City, City of Olongapo, and the City of Marikina. Davao City ranked second most liveable due to its relative second rank in terms of social dimension, third in terms of physical dimension, and performed fairly in both governance (11th) and economic (16th) dimensions. Its rank in terms of crime index, being third in terms of house and low ownership ratio, being fourth in terms of public hospital bed capacity, and being seventh in terms of employment rate contribute much to its aggregate score. Davao City also scored positively in all dimensions of liveability.
