Austria’s capital city, Vienna, is one of the best cities to live in the world, according to a new survey.
The city received the highest score for “liveability” out of 140 cities, scoring full marks in areas such as stability, healthcare, education and infrastructure. Overall, it received a whopping 99.1 out of 100 percentage points, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) annual survey found.
In second place was Melbourne, Australia, with a score of 98.4, and Sydney was third, the EIU said. The only other European city to grace the top 10 list was Copenhagen, Denmark, which came in ninth place.
Other top-ranked cities were split between Japan (Osaka in fourth and Tokyo in joint seventh) and Canada (Calgary in fifth, and Vancouver and Toronto in sixth and joint seventh place, respectively).
The survey ranked 140 cities based on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
The 10 most liveable cities:
Vienna, Austria
Melbourne, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Osaka, Japan
Calgary, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Tokyo, Japan
Copenhagen, Denmark
Adelaide, Australia.
The 10 least liveable cities:
Caracas, Venezuela
Algiers, Algeria
Douala, Cameroon
Harare, Zimbabwe
Port Moresby, PNG
Karachi, Pakistan
Tripoli, Libya
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Lagos, Nigeria
Damascus, Syria.
There was little movement in the top 10 list compared with last year’s rankings. Vienna remained in first place, with Melbourne following closely behind. The year before that, Vienna had knocked the Australian city off the top spot, where it had reigned supreme for seven consecutive years.
This year, Sydney rose from fifth to third place, thanks to an improvement in its culture and environment score. However it remains behind its rival, Melbourne.
The report’s authors suggested the deterioration in culture and environment scores is of concern, largely down to the effects of climate change. Cities which received reduced scores in this category included New Delhi in India, which suffers from “appalling” air quality, Cairo in Egypt, where air quality is also a major issue, and Dhaka in Bangladesh.
“Despite the risk to future scores posed by climate change, a longer-term view suggests that overall liveability has been improving in recent years,” the authors wrote.
“In our sample of global cities, the average liveability score has increased by 0.5 percentage points, to just under 76, over the past five years, driven primarily by higher scores in the stability category.”