Australian and Canadian cities have dominated this year’s Global Liveability Index brought out by the respected Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Both Canada and Australia have three cities each in the top-ten rankings.
However, Vienna remains the most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit.
From Canada, Calgary came in at fifth, and Vancouver and Toronto in sixth and joint seventh, respectively.
From Australia, Melbourne came in at second followed by Sydney in third and Adelaide (tenth).
Copenhagen in Denmark (ninth), scores among the best.
Stability & Climate Change
Over the past year, EIU says it has observed that average scores for stability have risen, reflecting, in very general terms, a slight diminishing of the perceived threat of terrorism, after a period of acute concern.
Some of these improvements have been considerable but from a very low base (such as Tripoli in Libya and Jakarta in Indonesia), while others have seen smaller improvements to already acceptable scores (such as Seattle and Houston in the US, and Seoul in South Korea). Paris in France is the highest ranked city to have seen a deterioration in its stability score, owing to the ongoing anti-government gilets jaunes protests that began in late 2018.
In the emerging world, the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka triggered a downgrade for Colombo, while the growing instability between the US and Iran was behind a reduction in the stability score for Tehran.
Among the other categories, 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.
A lack of a concerted global effort to tackle climate change risks further downward revisions in these scores, threatening to offset improvements in the other categories, such as education and infrastructure, which remain on a broadly upward trend.
