The world’s most liveable city index sees Melbourne at number one, but three other Australian cities are in the top ten. Melbourne has outranked Vancouver to become the best city in the world to live, according to the latest Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Survey.
In a ranking of 140 cities around the world, Melbourne was given a score of 97.5%. the other Australian cities in the top 10 are Sydney (ranked sixthe best – up from seventh in the previous survey), while Perth and Adelaide ranked on a joint eight place.
Brisbane, another Australian city, ranked on 21st slot, behind cities such as Toronto (4th), Helsinki (7th), Paris (16th) and Tokyo (18th). Jon Copestake, editor for EIU Survey, said “Australia, with a low population density and relatively low crime rates, continues to supply some of the world’s most liveable cities.” Vancouver’s score was affected by a lower rating for infrastructure, placing it below Vienna in Austria, on the third slot. It’s the first time since 2002 that the Canadian city hasn’t occupied or shared the top place for liveability. It seems the residents have to pay for what they get, though, with another EIU report ranking Sydney as the sixth most expensive city in the world, with Melbourne coming at no. 7.
The survey assessed the cost of living in both cities to be about 40% higher than in New York, mostly because of steep housing costs in Australia. Residents of Perth boasted the strongest purchasing power in Australia, aided by the fattest pay packets in the land. Even so, the cost of living in Perth and Brisbane – the 13th and 14th most-expensive locations – came in at about 25% than New York.
On the other side… of the ocean
Not surprisingly, the debt-ridden eurozone countries ranked poorly in the EIU liveability rankings. Greece’s capital, Athens dropped from 62 to 67th place, ranking that puts it below Uruguay’s capital Montevideo. Similarly, the liveability accross much of the Middle East with its so called Arab Spring-inspired civil unrest, will come as no surprise. The Libyan capital Tripoli, which has fallen under the control of rebel fighters in recent days, dived to 135th.
Hong Kong was ranked at 31st, San Francisco came in at 51st, as did Singapore, with both narrowly pipping London at 53rd and New York at 56th. Elsewhere in the Asian region, the giant Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai came in at 72nd and 79th, respectively, while India’s commercial hub of Mumbai languished at 116th, just above Jakarta, Indonesia, at 119th. The worst places to live among the 140 locations surveyed by EIU were Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh’s Dhaka and Zimbabwe’s Harare. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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