East Asian cities are far more peaceful, safe, and advanced than any north american/europe counterpart. Much of the infrastructure in the latter are outdated, old, rustic even as the historical look & feel triumphs over efficiency. Whereas cities like Singapore blows backward cities like Vancouver out of the water on civic report card.
Even in cities widely marketed as a desirable "western liberal progressive bastions" are filled with corruption, ideological drives from special interest groups (ex. NIMBY/YIMBY), that makes it impossible for any sort of progress to happen at the rate that is beneficial to the citizens. Especially now we had the pendulum of compassion swing so far towards the left to the point of ridiculousness (ex. math is racist, 1x1=2) that everybody is so worried about losing their jobs about going against the narrative of their employers that they can't/won't introduce homeostasis when the equilibrium is knocked off. It's only NOW that this pendulum is swinging to the far right but extreme swings are not what produces peaceful progressive societies, they produce violence because of the absurdities that followers believe about themselves to support whatever narrative is being disseminated through their favourite echo chambers.
Most of the west's rich (double to five digit millionaires) are sending their offsprings to Singapore, not Paris or Berlin.