World’s Most Expensive City – Singapore

Did you read the recent BBC article on the worlds most expensive city? It named Singapore at the top, followed by some others that were more of a surpass, Paris, Oslo, Zurich and Sydney. I expected New York, London, and Tokyo for sure. One of the premises is that Singapore makes the list because of “The city’s strong currency combined with the high cost of running a car and soaring utility bills contributed to Singapore topping the list”.  What the?? Why are you running a car in Singapore, are you crazy!?

I briefly visited their city-state for the first time last year on a trip to teach in India. I really liked it, a clean, beautiful, garden-like city state, with nice tropical weather, but most of all, it’s tiny. I mean it’s really, really tiny, definitely much, much smaller than say San Diego. Why on earth are you running a car there everyday? There were plenty of bike paths, and you can even walk to places easily. As for utilities, you have my sympathies, but I’d try my best to go solar for anything I could, considering the geographical location.

Stat alert: In searching for details about Singapore I found this cool website, if it were my home. It told me a bunch of cool stats on Singapore vs the US. The main one was that Singapore consumes 3.2 times more oil than the US, while using 35% less electricity. Why are these guys driving everywhere, use your bikes! However, positives were that in living there you will have a 67% more chance of being employed, that you will spend 77% less on healthcare, and you’ll likely earn 8% more money, as well as living a couple of years longer too.