And the Best City in the World is…

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and BuzzData’s
Best City Contest is over and the results are in!

Earlier in 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit and BuzzData partnered on the Best City Contest. We asked people to tell us where the best city in the world is to live, and prove it with data and a visualization – to have a chance of winning $10,000.

And you did! Competition was stiff – the entries were of a very high quality – but someone had to win and the judging panel (and indeed the BuzzData.com community) selected… Filippo Lovato. Congratulations Filippo!

Adding spatial characteristics to
determine liveability

Filippo’s new liveability index added 7 new indicators on themes of “spatial characteristics” including “green space”, “isolation” and “pollution”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Hong Kong topped his index. But Filippo notes: “Hong Kong, the winner, is a very compact city that has managed to maintain its natural heritage, create a dense network of green spaces and enjoy extensive links to the rest of the world.” You can see Filippo’s full submission and new index here.

Honourable mentions also go to: Christian Muise, Roxana Torre and Ewan Nicolson.

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“His [Filippo's] area of focus touched heavily on a weak spot in the current methodology, which is that of pollution and how “green” a city is – which has enabled some practical possible solutions to an area off the survey we were looking to improve upon anyway.”

Jon Copestake, Editor of the EIU’s Cost of Living and Liveability surveys

 

Using BuzzData to share data and crowdsource analysis

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The whole contest was run on BuzzData.com, the public Hive or data hub that BuzzData operates and on which anyone can share data (if you don’t want to set up your own Hive).

Entrants made great use of the BuzzData hub’s features – from “following” the Best City Contest Topic and EIU Datarooms so as to receive automatic notifications about relevant activity to using the API to both power applications allowing you to select the best city for you and return the completed survey data to a Dataroom so it became discoverable and usable.

“I think it’s been a fascinating insightful and very useful project. I wouldn’t hesitate to do something similar for any of the products I work on or for wider EIU products. There is so much value that can be added by opening a product up to feedback and reinterpretation of this kind. I also see this kind of interaction between data providers and their audience opening up even further as time goes by and social and digital media remove the barriers between businesses and their markets.”

Jon Copestake, Editor of the EIU’s Cost of Living and Liveability surveys

 

Find out more about the Best City Contest

For more about the Best City Contest and the winner’s submission, read the official press release, check out our interview with Jon Copestake from the EIU and download the EIU’s summary report.

 

You can also register for our upcoming Best City Contest review webinar, where Jon Copestake (EIU), Nick Edouard (BuzzData) and others will be discussing all things Best City Contest-related.

Watch this space for more exciting contests coming soon!
But we’re always on the look out for more. If you or your organization has data that you’d like to share openly, we’d love to hear from you.

 

BuzzData - the best way to share data

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Like to learn more?

If you’d like to learn more about the Best City Contest, crowdsourcing
or how BuzzData can help you share data, we’d love to have a chat.