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Trieste City Hall

Top 10 Italian cities in terms of quality of life

Top 10 Italian cities in terms of quality of life

The ranking confirms the historical North-South socioeconomic divide

The business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore published its annual ranking of Italian cities in terms of quality of life. The winner this year is the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region – Trieste. As a matter of fact, five of the top 10 cities are located in the northeast of the country, and all but one are in the northern regions.

North-South socioeconomic divide

The 32nd edition of the prestigious ranking added new dimensions for 2021 in the points calculation, which means there are now 90 factors, grouped in 6 categories, determining the overall quality of life in a city. This makes the ranking the most comprehensive one in its history.

Here are the top 10 cities (out of 107 ranked):

  • Trieste
  • Milan
  • Trento
  • Aosta
  • Bolzano
  • Bologna
  • Pordenone
  • Verona
  • Udine
  • Treviso

The capital Rome has ranked 13th, but the good news there is that it has climbed 19 places upwards when compared to the previous year’s list. Milan, although second now, was also out of the top 10 in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic which hit the Lombardy region quite hard at first.

According to analysis, the strong performance of the north-eastern cities is thanks to their high marks in terms of quality of life for women – a new index, which focuses on gender issues in the post-pandemic recovery.

Trieste and Bologna are distinguished for their high levels of education among their residents. In the case of the latter (which is also the only city from the centre of the country in the top 10) that translates to 76.8% of residents aged between 25 and 64 having higher education.

The Southern cities tend to occupy the bottom of the ranking with the Calabrian town of Crotone in the last place. This shows that this is where investments from the EU recovery funds should go first in order to tackle longstanding issues of territorial cohesion, gender gaps and youth unemployment.

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