Vienna remains the most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed, having displaced Melbourne from the top spot in 2018, ending a record run of seven consecutive years. 

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

The top ten remains unchanged from last year’s ranking, but some cities have moved places. Sydney, for example, has risen from fifth to third, thanks to an improvement in its culture and environment score, reflecting an increased focus on combating and mitigating the impacts of climate change, as outlined by the city’s ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ strategy. But with both Vienna and Melbourne already scoring very highly across all criteria, there is only limited potential for Sydney to displace either Melbourne or Vienna at the top of the rankings. 

Over the past year, the EIU team has noted that average scores for stability have risen, reflecting a slight weakening of the perceived threat of terrorism. 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, which began in late 2018. 

Weakening culture and environment scores

Among the other scoring categories, a concerning aspect is the deterioration in culture and environment ratings. Cities in emerging markets are among the most exposed to the effects of climate change and have seen their scores downgraded. These include New Delhi in India, Cairo in Egypt, and Dhaka in Bangladesh. A lack of a concerted global effort to address climate change threatens to result in these cities’ scores falling further, and harm improvements in other areas, such as education and infrastructure. 

Despite the risk to future scores posed by climate change, overall liveability has been improving in recent years – with average liveability rising by 0.5 percentage points, to just under 76 over the past five years, driven mainly by higher scores in the stability category. Among the 56 cities that have seen improvements in their overall liveability rankings over the past five years, four stand out. Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, Hanoi in Vietnam, Kiev in Ukraine, and Belgrade in Serbia have seen increases of 5 percentage points or more. In the last 12 months, Belgrade has jumped further up the index, from 82nd place to 77th, as a result of upgrades to its infrastructure and healthcare scores. 

Overall, the index remains dominated by medium-sized cities in wealthy countries. These are characterised by well-funded public healthcare systems, compulsory and high-quality education, and functional road and rail infrastructure. The provision of these services is assisted by the presence of fully democratic electoral systems and generally low levels of corruption. Tokyo’s presence in the top ten shows that it’s possible to scale up these characteristics, but cities with two, three or four times as many people tend to be greater magnets for crime and terrorism. This is why other large “global” cities in advanced economies, such as London and New York, score lower than Vienna and Melbourne (and Tokyo) for stability and infrastructure but are able to match or exceed them for culture and environment. 

In summary, the EIU team note the continued gradual improvement of cities in emerging markets as regard to infrastructure, education and healthcare, as well as, in many cases, stability. These gains, however, are at risk from the effects of climate change. With extreme weather events increasing in strength and frequency around the world, cities in emerging markets are often the most directly affected and the least resilient. But climate change also threatens the liveability of cities at the top of the index too, the EIU team warns, adding that current levels of city liveability will fall unless rising temperatures are addressed as part of a synchronised worldwide effort.