If the crime in Cape Town is getting you down, you might be tempted to take a break from it all.

Locally, I would recommend heading out to Clarens in the Eastern Free State, which is home to some of the most underworked and bored looking police officers I’ve ever met.

If you’re planning on travelling abroad, you might want to consider one of the cities that made the top 10 on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2019 Safe Cities Index (SCI).

Over to CNN:

Our understanding of city safety has changed in recent years, the SCI report suggests.

With issues such as terrorism and climate change increasingly on people’s minds, the index’s compilers say it now takes into account the ability of a city to “bounce back” after a natural or man-made disaster.

While analyzing a city’s resilience, the Safe Cities Index looked at the emergency services available in the city, transport facilities, catastrophe insurance, disaster-risk development and cyber-security preparedness.

Cape Town doesn’t appear on the list, although it did get named the 14th friendliest city in the world in a recent survey by Big 7 Travel.

South Africa is a bit divided over that one.

The SCI did take a look at Jozi, which scored a sad 63,2 out of 100 on personal security, and even lower on health security.

As for who cracked the top spot…drumroll, please…

Topping the list is Tokyo. The most populated metropolis on Earth earns a score of 92.0 out of a possible 100.

Singapore is hot on its heels in second place with 91.5 and another Japanese metropolis, Osaka, is third, with 90.9. No big shocks there, these cities also made up the top three in the two previous SCI rankings, conducted in 2015 and 2017.

European cities including Amsterdam — busy fighting overtourism issues — and Copenhagen, known for its picturesque waterside houses and laid back “hygge” lifestyle, also made the top 10, at number four and number eight respectively.

Here’s a quick look at the top five in each category:

As you can see, Tokyo topped the list in terms of digital security, while Singapore was rated higher for infrastructure security and personal security. It’s Tokyo’s overall score that landed them the top spot.

“The research highlights how different types of safety are thoroughly intertwined,” said Naka Kondo, senior editor of The Economist Intelligence Unit and editor of the SCI2019 report.

Hong Kong, number 9 on the list in 2017, was down to number 20 this year. The city has been rocked by sometimes violent anti-government protests in the past few months, leading to a decline in visitor numbers.

If you’d like to check out the full report, you can access a PDF here.

For now, I’ll leave with the top 10 safest cities in the world:

1. Tokyo, Japan
2. Singapore
3. Osaka, Japan
4. Amsterdam, the Netherlands
5. Sydney, Australia
6. Toronto, Canada
7. Washington DC, US
8. Copenhagen, Denmark & Seoul, South Korea

Rounding it off, we have Melbourne, Australia at number 10.

Happy travels.

[source:cnn]