Movers and shakers on the EIU’s city liveability ranking

THE best quality of life of any of the world's urbanites is still enjoyed by Melburnians, according to the latest Liveability report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our corporate sibling. For the third year in a row Australia's second city has kept a hair's breadth ahead of Vienna and Vancouver, which spent almost a decade in first place before Melbourne's reign began. The ranking scores 140 cities on a scale of zero to 100 for each of 30 factors such as the quality of public healthcare or the threat of military conflict. These 30 values are then combined to create scores in five areas: stability, infrastructure, education, health care, and culture and environment. A weighted average of those five numbers gives each city its final score. A glance at the top ten shows that the cities that do best are mid-sized conurbations in countries with low population densities, because such conditions will often result in low crime, working infrastructure and lots of recreational activities. The comparatively poor performances of London and New York can be mainly attributed to their stability scores, which are low because of a perceived terrorism risk. Damascus has seen its score crash recently owing to Syria's ongoing civil war. In 2008 its stability score was the same as New York's; now it is tied for last place with Karachi, Pakistan. Conversely, Bogotá's sprint up the scoreboard in the past five years is due to the decline in guerrilla-related violence.