The ranking from the the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research organisation for the Economist newspaper, assesses 173 of the world’s cities on the basis of stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
The Austrian capital topped its Danish counterpart with a better score on healthcare, scoring a perfect 100 percent to Copenhagen’s 95.8 percent.
Both cities scored ‘perfect’ ratings on stability, education and infrastructure. When it came to culture and environment, Copenhagen bested its Austrian counterpart, with a score of 95.4 to Vienna’s 93.5.
“A lack of major sporting events contributed to its lower tally of 93.5 out of 100 in the culture and environment category”, the newspaper explained, adding that Vienna was “far from lacking in other forms of culture.”
Zurich in Switzerland took third place, ousting the Australian city of Melbourne, which slipped down to fourth place. The Canadian city of Calgary shares fifth place with Geneva, while Canada’s Vancouver and Australia’s Sydney share joint seventh place, with Osaka in Japan and New Zealand’s Auckland sharing 9th place.
In a press release put out with the report, the EIU said that disruptive protests in many countries in Western Europe, particularly Germany and France had dented the region’s position ont he stability ranking.
“Western Europe has retained its position as the most liveable region in the world, with Copenhagen, Zurich and Geneva once again making it to the top ten,” the report concluded.
“The 30 western European cities in this year’s ranking reported an impressive average score of 92 out of 100. However, the region has seen the biggest fall in score, owing to a deterioration in the stability category, which was also the biggest declining factor in all five categories in the index globally.”
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