Canada, Australia dominate Liveability rankings

By Eudore R. Chand

DUBAI 5 September 2019: Vienna remains the most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit in the Global Liveability Index 2019.

After displacing Melbourne from the top spot in 2018, ending a record run of seven consecutive years, Vienna retained its position at the head of the survey in 2019. The two cities continue to be separated by 0.7 percentage points, with Vienna scoring 99.1 out of 100 and Melbourne 98.4.

Two other Australian cities feature in the top ten: Sydney (in third) and Adelaide (tenth), while only one other European city, Copenhagen in Denmark (ninth), scores among the best.

The other top ranked cities are 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, respectively).

A deterioration in culture and environment scores is of concern. A slew of cities in emerging markets that are among the most exposed to the effects of climate change have seen their scores downgraded.

These include 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.