2. Skopje, Macedonia — 13.604 points
Skopje receives high scores for religious and ethnic diversity, but the city also features a striking side-by-side mix of old and new and a great deal of geographic diversity too. Nestled between mountains and split by the Vardar River, Skopje lies on the junction of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates — millennia of documented underground rumbling are dotted with serious earthquakes, like the one that destroyed almost the entire city in 1963. The silver lining was that Skopje’s administrators were able to make future-looking plans for Skopje, including better infrastructure. But the city remains very ethnically segregated: ethnic Macedonians mostly live in the rebuilt city while the largely Muslim Albanian minority, the largest such group in Macedonia overall, live in the poorer north part.
