The 26 most crime-free, financially equal, and healthy cities in the world

Global design and consultancy firm Arcadis has released its annual report on the most sustainable cities in the world.

The organisation ranked 100 cities in three sub-indexes - people, planet, and profit - as part of a report entitled "Sustainable Cities Index 2016: Putting people at the heart of city sustainability."

The "people" sub-index set out to find the city with the highest quality of life by rating eight metrics:

• Health (life expectancy and obesity)
• Education (literacy and universities)
• Income inequality
• Work-life balance
• Crime
• Green space within cities
• Housing and living costs
• Dependency ratio

Well-established European cities dominated the list, mostly thanks to low levels of income inequality which is intrinsically linked to other metrics including crime, education, health and affordability.

However, no American cities appear in the ranking. According to Arcadis, US destinations are "generally weighed down by a high degree of income inequality, high crime, obesity, a lack of affordable housing, and long working hours."

Interestingly, the report found that no one city performed well in all three sub-indexes, instead scoring averagely across the board or excelling in specific pillars.