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World's most expensive cities: Dubai barely in top 200

Dubai's rankings as an affordable city are impacted by higher rental values.

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For UAE residents complaining about the rising cost of living, here's some news. Dubai is not among the Top 100 or even the Top 150 most expensive cities in the world.

In fact, while Dubai ranks at #190 among the world's most expensive cities as ranked by the latest 2017 Numbeo Cost of Living Index, Abu Dhabi (#252) and Sharjah (#273) are stacked in the bottom half of the 484 cities ranked by the index.

Regional Top 10 Most Expensive Cities 1. Kuwait City, Kuwait 2. Dubai, United Arab Emirates 3. Ad Dammam, Saudi Arabia 4. Doha, Qatar 5. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 6. Beirut, Lebanon 7. Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 8. Amman, Jordan 9. Irbil, Iraq 10. Manama, Bahrain Source: Numbeo

Numbeo is a global database of user-contributed data about cities and countries worldwide, and the index calculates the ranking based on a range of costs, including rentals, groceries, travel, eating out and clothing, etc.

A quick look at the rankings of some of the other global expat hotspots will clear the air a bit more: The three UAE cities are much more affordable than, say, New York (#16) and San Francisco (#18) in the US, Kuwait City (#24) in Kuwait, Tokyo (#26) in Japan, Sydney (#41) and Perth (#42) in Australia, London (#68) in UK, Hong Kong (#86) and Doha (#222) in Qatar.

Dubai's rankings as an affordable city are impacted by higher rental values, with the emirate ranked as the #11 most expensive on the rent index, which forms a part of the overall calculations.

Top 10 Most Expensive Cities 1. Hamilton, Bermuda 2. Geneva, Switzerland 3. Basel, Switzerland 4. Zurich, Switzerland 5. Zug, Switzerland 6. Lausanne, Switzerland 7. Bern, Switzerland 8. Lugano, Switzerland 9. Stavanger, Norway 10. Trondheim, Norway

Globally, Hamilton in Bermuda is officially the most expensive city, followed by seven cities in Switzerland that occupy slots from the second to the eighth most expensive city in the world. Norway's Stavanger and Trondheim round up the Global Top 10.