For the sixth consecutive year, Melbourne, Australia has been deemed the most livable city in the world.
A report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) assigned a rating to 140 of the world’s major cities in the categories of health care, education, stability, culture and environment, and infrastructure, using both qualitative and quantitative factors to score cities across the five categories. The scores range from 1-100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. According to the EIU, the survey addresses cities that people might want to live in or visit.
Melbourne received perfect scores in health care, education, and infrastructure, and 95 out of 100 in stability, and a 95.1 out of 100 in culture and environment. The city boasted an overall score of 97.5 out of 100, to make it the highest out of the 140 cities surveyed.
Closely trailing the Australian city was Austria’s capital of Vienna, with a score of 97.4 out of 100, only 0.1 percentage point from stealing Melbourne’s No. 1 spot.
Canada’s Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary ranked third and fourth respectively, as Calgary, Canada tied for fifth with Australia’s southern city of Adelaide. Sydney dropped from the top 10 this year after being ranked seventh in the 2015 study. Perth, in Western Australia, took seventh for this year.
The report also showed that a number of cities in the Middle East and North Africa have shown a sharp decline in livability, as extreme jihadi group ISIS continues to spread across countries and cities in those regions.
Tripoli, Libya’s capital city, scored only 35.9 out of 100, while Damascus, Syria, had the sharpest decline in livability, ranking last out of the 140 cities surveyed. According to the report, Damascus has a score of just 30.2 out of 100, and its livability has declined 26.1% over the past five years. Tourists are unlikely to visit these cities due to escalating hostilities, the EIU notes, but were included in the survey because they were deemed relatively stable just a few years ago.
These are the 10 most livable cities in the world and their scores:
1. Melbourne, Australia: 97.5
2. Vienna, Austria: 97.4
3. Vancouver, Canada: 97.3
4. Toronto, Canada: 97.2
5. Calgary, Canada: 96.6
5. Adelaide, Australia: 96.6
7. Perth, Australia: 95.9
8. Auckland, New Zealand: 95.7
9. Helsinki, Finland: 96.6
10. Hamburg, Germany: 95
