Melbourne is the world’s most liveable city for the sixth year running accordingthe Economist’s global liveability survey.
The top five most liveable cities remained unchanged: Melbourne followed by Vienna, Vancouver and Toronto. Adelaide and Calgary in Canada tied for fifth place.
Melbourne lord mayor, Robert Doyle, celebrated the ranking on Thursday: “I can’t wait to make my annual phone call to Gregor Robertson, mayor of Vancouver,” he said.
Vancouver was the number one city before being overtaken by Melbourne in 2011, which possibly explains why Doyle skips calling Michael Häupl, mayor of second-placed Vienna, for gloating to Robertson.
“To retain the title of world’s most liveable city for six consecutive years is a fantastic accolade for Melbourne, and something we should all be proud of,” Doyle said.
“We do not take this title for granted and are constantly planning and implementing policies that will continue to improve our quality of life.”
Sydney fell four places from seventh in 2015 to 11th in the 2016 survey “owing to a heightened perceived threat of terrorism”.
It’s the second blow to Sydney’s self confidence in a week. On Monday the city fell from first to second place on Conde Nast’s 2016 list of the friendliest cities.
Not all Sydney residents were taking it well.
Melbourne maintained its overall liveability score of 97.5, determined by its score across five broad categories of stability (95), healthcare (100), culture and environment (95.1), education (100) and infrastructure (100).
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the result was “just more proof that there’s no city on earth quite like Melbourne”.
According to the individual rankings, just 0.1 percentage points separate Melbourne from Vienna, because Melbourne scored marginally higher in the culture and environment category.
There are only 3.3 points between Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia’s lowest-ranked city, in 16th place. Hobart, Darwin, and Canberra were not included in the rankings.
The rest of the top 10 was Perth in Western Australia in seventh, Auckland in eighth, Helsinki in ninth and Hamburg 10th. That meant six of the top 10 were in Australia or Canada, both wealthy, educated countries with a population density of 3.1 and 3.9 people per square kilometre, respectively.
That seems to be the formula. According to liveable cities report, “those that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density” that can “foster a range of recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure.”
The least-liveable cities of the 140 surveyed were characterised by conflict and civil unrest. At the bottom of the list was Damascus which has fallen 26.1 percentage points in the past five years due to civil war.
It is the sharpest drop in liveability of any city, followed by Kiev, Ukraine, which fell 25.1 points to 131st place, due to conflict with Russia. Other cities where liveability had declined sharply included Paris (-3.7 points), Detroit (-5.7) and Moscow (-5.6).
The five least-liveable cities were Damascus followed by Tripoli, Libya; Lagos, Nigeria; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
[Source:- Guardian]
