A 2013 article looking at the safest countries in the world to live in rates New Zealand as the top country.  The top 10 were 10. Sweden, 9. Finland, 8. Austria, 7. Australia, 6. Norway, 5. Ireland, 4. Iceland, 3. Denmark, 2. Tuvalu and 1. New Zealand.

These types of lists can be very arbitrary, but increasingly the countries listed – Nordic, Northern Europe, Australia and New Zealand are being compared as the top places in the world to live and bring up a family.

As I noted in my June 2013 Ingenium Conference Paper, New Zealand is doing very well across a wide range of international indicators.

This matters for Infrastructure Management Professionals – the national investment in infrastructure is a reflection of how a country sees itself, and the hope or expectation it has for the future.

Infrastructure is a very long-term investment and pays dividends to society over multiple generations.

How well a country is perceived as doing reflects in overall investment, immigration, and growth.  

By all these measures New Zealand is currently doing very well, and as my paper notes, our only constraint on growth is going to be our national immigration policy.

As Infrastructure Management experts based in New Zealand, this means that we can expect current growth projections to be realised, and that we will need to ensure that infrastructure investment remains at a sufficient level to support the service level expectations of a growing and prosperous society.

PHOTO CREDIT: By Tākuta / Edward Hyde – FLICKR, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link