North America is home to six of the top 20 safest cities in the world, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Safe Cities Index 2021, which is sponsored by NEC Corp. Among the overall regional rankings, Toronto took second place (behind Copenhagen), followed by New York City (11th); Washington, D.C. (14th); San Francisco (15th); Los Angeles (18th); and Chicago (20th).

The index, now in its fourth iteration, ranks 60 cities across 76 indicators covering five categories: digital security, health security, infrastructure security, personal security and environmental security, with the final pillar of environmental security new to the index this year.

“COVID-19 is the first global pandemic to strike humanity since we became a predominantly urban species. … In such circumstances, health is an obvious place to begin a discussion of urban security in 2021. Stopping there, though, would miss most of the picture,” states the report, which discusses just how much