The world’s most expensive and cheapest cities: an updated ranking

Since last year the whole world has been facing a global crisis which has led to a rapid rise in inflation and consequently in the cost of living. The latest survey conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit showed how global inflation reached 8.1% in 2022. This year, although decreasing, it remains very high at 7.4%. These levels are particularly high, considering that in the previous 5 years, the average was 2.9%.

The survey was conducted from August 14 to September 11 this year, comparing more than 400 individual prices for more than 200 products and services in 173 cities. By grouping the data, we could draw up the ranking of the most expensive cities in the world in 2023. The top 10 positions include two Asian cities, four European cities, and three United States cities. Here is the ranking.

The world’s most expensive cities: Singapore and Zurich in the lead

In the 2023 ranking of the world’s most expensive cities, we have a tie at the top. Singapore and Zurich share the first place as the cities with the highest cost of living. If this is nothing new for Singapore given that it is the ninth time in eleven years that it has been in the lead, for Zurich it is a leap forward after last year’s sixth place. But even Switzerland’s largest city has certainly never been cheap. In 2020 it was already in the first place and rarely left the top ten.

In Singapore, food, alcohol, and clothes can cost a fortune. But even from a bureaucratic point of view, things are no better: for example, the cost of a certificate of ownership of a car recently reached 106 thousand dollars due to the hostile attitude of the government.

Things are no better in Zurich where the leap forward in all these positions in just one year is mainly due to the Swiss franc which stood at a price of over 10% against the dollar, taken as the reference currency in this international investigation.

Going down the ranking we notice that this year only 3 Asian cities appear in the top 10. The reason is that inflation has hit less in Asia than in the rest of the globalized world. The increase in the cost of living grew in 2023 by only 3%.

The Chinese cities of Nanjing, Wuxi, Dalian, and Beijing all dropped more than 25 places, while Tokyo and Osaka in Japan fell 23 and 27 places respectively.

Around half of the top 20 places are occupied by Western European cities. The reason may be due to the increase in inflation and the choice of the European Central Bank to raise interest rates. New York instead went down. Last year it was joint first in Singapore, this year it slipped to third place.

Major Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg also fell. Moscow dropped 105 places to 142nd place, while St. Petersburg dropped 74 positions to 147th. The three cities that rose the most were Santiago de Querétaro and Aguascalientes in Mexico, and Costa Rica’s capital, San José.