Vienna is No. 1 again out of the 140 cities included in this year's World's Most Liveable City ranking by the Economist Intelligence Unit released on September 4. The city got an almost perfect score of 99.1%, scoring higher for stability, culture and environment, education and infrastructure, and health care, the report said.
Vienna is famous for its architecture and luscious green landscape made more beautiful by traditional coffee shops not disrupted by consumerism. The capital of Austria has the highest GDP in the country. It accounted for as much as 25.5% of the country's GDP. The city is industrialized since it has a highly developed economy, skilled labor force, and a high standard of living. The city has more than 200 multinational corporations.
At No. 2 and No. 3 are Melbourne and Sydney respectively. Melbourne was at the top spot for seven years until Vienna snatched the spot from the Australian city in 2018.
At No. 4 and No. 5 are Osaka and Calgary. Others on the top 20 are Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, as well as Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Hamburg while Berlin and Luxumbourg are closed at No. 21 and 23.
The report ranks the cities according to the quality of education, well-funded public healthcare, and functional transport systems. The cities on the top list also only have a population between 300,000 and 1 million.
According to Duncan Innes-Ker, EIU's regional director for Asia, the more popular cities that did not make it to the top list have common problems like traffic congestion, crimes, and already old public infrastructure. These are the reasons why London and New York ranked low at No. 48 and No. 58 respectively.
Although scored poorly for other factors, London and New York rated highly for culture. Their scores for those categories, however, could not compensate the low numbers they got for infrastructure, crime, and terrorism, the report said.
Other cities at the lower ranks are Honolulu, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Washington, and Chicago. Hong Kong and Singapore were ranked No. 38 and No. 40 respectively.
The report noted that most of the cities that did not make it to the list or at the lower tier were damaged by climate change and pollution. Such is the case for New Delhi, Cairo, Dhaka, Lagos, and Damascus.
Syria, meanwhile, was at the bottom of the list for seven years due to the ongoing war in the region.
