Berlin Crowned World’s Best Capital City for Bookworms, According to Data

Berlin Crowned World’s Best Capital City for Bookworms, According to Data

From classic fiction to mysteries, the ever-rising popularity of books means readers are able to dive into more enticing page-turners than ever before—with global book sales expected to exceed 129 billion USD by 2023. Still, the impending question lingers—which cities are home to the biggest booklovers?

Interested to find out, TheKnowledgeAcademy.com identified the number of libraries and bookshops across the world’s most populated capital cities using Openstreetmap’s API Overpass, to create a final aggregated score revealing the best cities to be a bookworm. 

Top 10 best capital cities to be a bookworm

Please find the full breakdown of the result and all listed countries analysed in the data sheet.

TheKnowledgeAcademy.com can reveal that the world’s best capital city for booklovers is Berlin, Germany—boasting the highest overall index score (9.21/10). With its perfect bookshop score (10/10) bumping the capital to first place, a high library score (8.42/10) is also guaranteed to make book-obsessed German readers proud.

Securing second place is Tokyo, Japan with an impressive bookish score of 8.69/10 overall. Famously known as the birthplace city of manga, Tokyo claimed third best for its libraries (8.95/10) and fourth for its bookshops (8.42/10), which gained its rightfully high score.

Following close in third is Buenos Aires, Argentina which scored a stellar 8.68/10—only 0.01 less than Tokyo in second. The Argentine capital earned its highest score from its bookshops (9.47/10), whilst claiming a score of 7.89/10 for its libraries. 

Also in joint third is Rome, Italy (8.68/10). Rome’s scores peaked at 9.47/10 for its libraries—second in the category, and achieved a notable score of 7.89/10 for its bookshops confirming its overall ranking.

Top five worst capital cities to be a bookworm

Please find the full breakdown of the result and all listed countries analysed in the data sheet.

Out of all the cities analysed for the study, TheKnowledgeAcademy.com can reveal that the world’s worst capital city for booklovers is Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was unable to score anything above zero in both library and bookshop categories in the study, as its data showcased 0.40 libraries per capita (per one million people*) and 0.46 bookshops per capita*.  

Subsequently, Jakarta, Indonesia follows as the second worst capital for booklovers according to the study. Jakarta earned a final bookish score of a mere 0.53/10, as it tallied the same underwhelming scores for both its libraries and bookshops. 

For the full breakdown, please see the study here: https://www.theknowledgeacademy.com/blog/the-best-capital-cities-in-the-world-for-book-lovers/

Methodology

1. TheKnowledgeAcademy.com sought to find the best cities to be a bookworm.
   
   
2. Firstly, WorldData.info was used to find the top 20 capital cities by population around the world. Capital cities that had zero libraries or bookshops were excluded. Additionally, countries whose political stability score (as determined by theglobaleconomy index score from 2020) ranked less than minus 1 were also excluded.
   
   
3. Following this, The Knowledge Academy consulted Openstreetmap’s API Overpass (a publicly contributed, crowd-sourced dataset) to obtain the counts of libraries and bookshops in each capital city* in the seed list. The counts of libraries and bookshops were then calculated per capita (per one million people).
   
   
4. A percentrank score was then calculated for each criteria analysed (the number of libraries and bookshops per capita) and then averaged per capital city, to collate a final average score.
   
   
5. The final scores were ranked from highest to lowest establishing the best cities to be a bookworm.
   
   
6. Additionally, a separate ranking table for European capitals was made using the same criteria above, revealing the counts of libraries and bookshops which were calculated per capita (per one hundred thousand people). Again, countries with a low political stability score were excluded, as well as capitals with less than one hundred thousand people. Eurostat’s House Expenditure data (in EUR€) on newspapers, books, and stationery per capita (by country) was also gathered and assigned to their respective capital cities as an additional criteria to be weighed in the final score. 2020 data was used for this attribute, and where this information was missing for some countries, the 2019 value was substituted instead.
   
   
7. Data was collected on 11th May 2022 and is subject to change

*Note: for Brazil, its capital Brasilia was changed to São Paulo due to it being a denser area, more akin to a true capital. The same was done for Switzerland (Bern to Zurich).

**The percentrank formula goes off a range of values, and since Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, displayed low scores on each category—0.40 for its libraries and 0.46 for its bookshops per capita (one million people), it scored a zero on both therefore earning a final score of zero. 

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