Auckland has failed to regain its spot amongst the world’s most liveable cities.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Liveability Index annual rankings this year see New Zealand’s biggest city stuck in 12th place, same as it was last year.
The top 10 is dominated by Australia, Japan and Canada, but it’s Austria’s Vienna which takes out number one for the second year in a row, after knocking Melbourne off the top spot in 2018.
Vienna scored 99.1 out of a possible 100 points, with perfect scores awarded for stability, healthcare, education and infrastructure. Melbourne was let down by a lower stability score, bigger cities being a “greater magnet for crime and terrorism”, according to the EIU.
Despite this Tokyo – one of the world’s biggest cities – made the list in seventh-equal place.
The top 10 cities were unchanged from last year, but the order shuffled a bit.
Top 10 cities
- Vienna, Austria
- Melbourne, Australia
- Sydney Australia
- Osaka, Japan
- Calgary, Canada
- Vancouver, Canada
- Toronto, Canada
- Tokyo, Japan
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Adelaide, Australia
The biggest improvements over the past five years have been seen in Serbia’s Belgrade, Vietnam’s Hanoi, the Ivory Coast’s Abidjan, Ukraine’s Kiev and Russia’s Moscow.
At the other end of the scale, the world’s least liveable city remains Syria’s Damascus, with no improvement to its 2018 score of 30.7/100.
Venezuela’s Caracas is the only new entry in the bottom 10, “as the government’s fight for legitimacy has impeded its ability to provide basic services for its citizens”.
Detroit has seen the biggest decline in liveability over the past five years, thanks to “major depopulation and urban decay resulting in a high incidence of crime, a collapse in local government tax revenue, swathes of vacant homes and inadequate infrastructure” (now in 56th place)
Similar falls have been seen in Libya’s Tripoli and Paraguay’s Asunción.
Bottom 10 cities (best to worst)
- Caracas, Venezuela
- Algiers, Algeria
- Douala, Cameroon
- Harare, Zimbabwe
- Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
- Karachi, Pakistan
- Tripoli, Libya
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Lagos, Nigeria
- Damascus, Syria
Overall, the 140 cities covered in the survey increased an average 0.5 points.
“Despite the risk to future scores posed by climate change, a longer-term view suggests that overall liveability has been improving in recent years… driven primarily by higher scores in the stability category.
“Devastating terrorist attacks in New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the past year are a reminder that threats to security are still apparent, but perceptions of the danger posed by terrorism have diminished in recent years.”
Last year was the first Auckland hadn’t made the top 10 since 2009. The super city has been dragged down by its inadequate infrastructure.
A separate survey released in March put Auckland in third place, behind only Zurich and the unbeatable Vienna.
2018’s report said major cities like Kabul and Baghdad aren’t included in the rankings because the survey is “designed to address a range of cities or business centres that people might want to live in or visit”.
“Although few would argue that Damascus in Syria and Tripoli in Libya are likely to attract visitors at present… their inclusion in the survey reflects cities that were deemed relatively stable before the 2011 Arab Spring.”
Source: Newshub Featured Image- Vienna. Photo credit: Getty / Newshub
