Kakapo grades cities like a school report card, and below 60 a city fails. We opened up all 45 failing cities to find the culprit — and it's almost never what people fear. 91% are dragged under by one thing: the streets after dark.
Kakapo grades cities like a US school report card, and at or below 60 a city fails outright. Of the 45 cities that fail, 41 (91%) are dragged under by the same single thing: night safety — not daytime crime, not transport, not healthcare.
Kakapo scores every destination out of 100 and colours it like a school report card: a strong pass at the top, and — at or below 60 — an outright fail, flagged "Dangerous." Across the 1,021 cities we score, 45 land in that failing band. The obvious question is why. A single number tells you a place is dangerous; it doesn't tell you what to do about it. So we opened up each failing score into its four parts — night safety, personal (daytime) safety, transport, and healthcare — and asked which one is doing the damage.
For each failing city we took its single lowest sub-score and tallied the winner across all 45. If failing cities failed for lots of different reasons, this table would be spread evenly. It isn't — it's a landslide.
| Culprit sub-score | Failing cities dragged down by it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Night safety — the streets after dark | 41 of 45 | 91% |
| Transport — getting around safely | 3 of 45 | 7% |
| Healthcare — care if you're hurt | 1 of 45 | 2% |
| Personal safety — daytime crime risk | 0 of 45 | 0% |
Average the four sub-scores across all 45 failing cities and the lopsidedness is stark. A failing city isn't uniformly bad — it has one deep hole:
| Sub-score | Average across the 45 failing cities |
|---|---|
| Night safety | 34.6 / 100 (the hole) |
| Personal safety | 39.5 / 100 |
| Transport | 45.4 / 100 |
| Healthcare | 51.4 / 100 |
Healthcare and transport in the average failing city sit 17 and 11 points above its night score. The overall grade — an average of 51.6 — is pulled under the pass line largely by that one collapsing dimension.
The pattern holds whether the city is a war zone or a familiar holiday name. Rio de Janeiro's healthcare (62) actually passes; Cape Town's transport (57) is close. What fails them is the same column every time.
| City | Overall | Worst sub-score | What that means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caracas, Venezuela | 42 | Night safety (5) | the lowest night score of any failing city |
| Johannesburg, South Africa | 41 | Night safety (23) | healthcare (56) is nearly a pass — the nights aren't |
| Port-au-Prince, Haiti | 46 | Night safety (13) | night collapses while daytime holds up better |
| Cape Town, South Africa | 49 | Night safety (30) | transport (57) passes; after dark is the drag |
| Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | 52 | Night safety (34) | healthcare (62) actually passes — nights don't |
| Lima, Peru | 53 | Night safety (40) | a familiar tourist city, failed by the small hours |
| Kyiv, Ukraine | 46 | Healthcare (35) | the rare exception — wartime healthcare, not the nights |
| Lagos, Nigeria | 54 | Transport (30) | one of only three cities failed most by transport |
Most safety warnings are a mood — "be careful there." This says the opposite: for 91% of the world's failing cities, the danger is specific, consistent, and time-boxed. It isn't the hospitals, it isn't the taxis, and it usually isn't the daytime. It's the streets after dark. That turns a scary grade into an actionable one — a failing city is very often a city you can visit far more safely simply by being indoors, or in trusted transport, once the sun goes down.
We pulled every city Kakapo scores from the live database — one row per city (largest-population settlement, with New York's boroughs collapsed into the city), 1,021 in all. A city "fails" at or below 60, Kakapo's published pass line (scores read like US school grades; 60 or under is "Dangerous"). For each of the 45 failing cities we identified its lowest of four sub-scores — night safety, personal safety, transport, healthcare — and counted the culprit. Full weighting is at https://kakapo.travel/about/methodology. Scores are comparative model estimates, not clinical or official ratings.
Free to cite in journalism, research or content — all we ask is a link back. Copy the attribution below:
Kakapo Editorial Team (2026). The Failing Grade: What Tips a City Into 'Fail'. Kakapo. https://kakapo.travel/blog/the-failing-grade-2026
Writing about urban safety, nightlife or a specific city? We give journalists custom data pulls at no cost — the full failing-city table, the sub-score breakdown for any city, or a night-safety cut by region. Email [email protected] and we usually reply the same day.
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Kakapo publishes real safety scores for every destination, drawing on national travel advisories, local crime data, healthcare infrastructure, and night-safety measures. Kakapo Studies is our research imprint — independent editorial, no advertiser influence on scores. Contact: [email protected].