Following an urban audit from the European Commission, Liege (the city where I am living) is one of the top criminal city in Europe (detailed results here)! In 2001, they counted 256 crimes for 1000 inhabitants. In Belgium, Bruxelles has 153 crimes and Charleroi, a city one often refers as a mafia city has only 144 crimes for 1000 inhabitants. Even big capital cities like London has a lower scores than Liege (146) …

Well, do I feel insecure when I am walking outside, at night? Not particularly. Of course, there are part of the city where I don’t want to go (and have nothing to do, anyway). But I thinks that’s the same in every city, isn’t it? My brother-in-law and sister-in-law really hate Liege (they had very bad social experiments here, I think). But, in my laboratory, some foreign scientists (from UK, Germnay, Canada) find Liege pretty and cosy (maybe they don’t want to disappoint us).

Apart from that, there are some interesting points I’ve learned ..

• Liege had, in 2001, only 184604 inhabitants. That means that it wasn’t considered as a “big city” anymore (it has to have more than 200000 inhabitants for that).
• There are only 6% of non-EU nationals.
• Unemployment rate is one of the highest in Europe, with 24%.
• The median disposable annual household income is only 16748 &euros; (we even don’t have that with a Ph.D. grant!) but it’s also in the middle of what people earn in other European cities.
• Finally, in 1991, only 21% of resident population have a secondary education (and only 5% have a tertiary education, despite the fact that there is a university in the city).

Mixed feelings …

• My life