Top 10 world's most expensive cities

When I first heard of this list, I was expecting that the top 10 most expensive cities would be only European, Japanese and cities of a few other wealthy nations. But it turns out that is not quite like that. 

The list I post here was made by Mercer, a consulting firm. Mercer does a cost of living survey every year, and according to them the top 10 most expensive cities in the world are:

10- Sao Paulo, Brazil.

9- Hong kong, Hong Kong.

8- Singapore, Singapore.

7- Zurich, Switzerland.

6- Osaka, Japan.

5- Geneva, Switzerland.

4- Moscow, Russia.

3- N'Djamena, Chad.

2- Tokyo, Japan

1- Luanda, Angola.

Of the top 3 most expensive cities in the world, 2 are African. Now you are probably wondering how come Angola and Chad, two countries where most of the population lives below the poverty line, have their capitals being SO expensive to live... And how can the population afford by any means to simply survive?

But here is the trick, the Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper explains:

"According to the headlines of a slew of international media outlets that really should know better – including the Huffington Post and TIME – Luanda, Angola, is the world’s most expensive city. It’s not. Well, it might be, but that’s not what the Mercer Cost of Living Survey, on which the reports were based, was measuring."

In fact, according to the survey, Luanda is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates. The survey’s designed for companies who want to do business in other countries, and need to factor in the costs of sending staff there. It measures things like the rent of a three-bedroom villa in an adequately secure environment, the cost of sending a child to an international school and the price of a meal in a good restaurant. The figures that inform the report would be completely alien to most of Luanda’s residents, who live below the poverty datum line."

....

"Clearly, the costs outlined in the Mercer survey are about scarcity rather than quality. The top African cities in the list manage to combine severe poverty with extensive resource wealth, primarily through oil, (but also tourism in the case of Victoria). As a result of this poverty, housing good enough for foreign marketing managers and their families is in short supply, allowing landlords to simply obey the laws of economics and jack the prices up as high as they possibly can go."

For full article: http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-07-29-capitals-africas-poorest-worlds-costliest

This article only explains why the African cities are on this list. But for the few other cities of developing countries the same mentality works (not with the same emphasis though), if you want to live a wealthy life, where there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, you have to pay, and you have to pay high.