Believe it or not the city of San José, Costa Rica is ranked as the “least stressful city” to live in Latin America, according to British company Zipjet and its 2017 Global Least & Most Stressful Cities Ranking.

Zipjet develops technology which aims to reduce stress in people’s lives; they carried out a study to find out how the most stressful cities around the world can benefit from the example of those cities less affected by stress.

Among the criteria taken into consideration are: Density, Public Transport, Green Spaces, Traffic, Sunshine Hours, Noise Pollution, Air Pollution, Light Pollution, Unemployment, Mental Health, Family Purchase Power, Physical Health, to mention a few.

“To select the cities in the ranking, we studied 500 locations based on data relating to the cities themselves, pollution, finance and the citizens. Within these we analyzed criteria such as traffic, security and mental health issues. This determined a ranking of 150 cities, which highlights the most and least stressful cities with available data on all factors relating to the study”, explains the report.

San José, Costa Rica appears in the global ranking in position 46 of 150 cities situated in the five continents and above cities like London, Paris, Tokyo and New York, and in first place of the Latin American cities listed.

The top cities where it is less stressful to live are: Stuttgart, Germany; Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Hannover, Germany; Bern, Switzerland and Munich, Germany.

In the United States the best ranked city is Seattle, in position 12.

While in Latin America Montevideo, Uruguay holds position 49; Santiago, Chile ranks 76 followed by Panama City, Panama in 77.

The most stressful city according to Zipjet’s general ranking is Baghdad, Iraq; in Latin America the worse ranked city is Caracas in Venezuela.

In case you are now considering relocating to San José, Costa Rica, we live you some advice, click here.