Melbourne Is The World's Most Livable City For The Fifth Year

Melbourne is the most liveable city in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) annual livability ranking. However, this year's scene is rather "gloomy", according to cnn.

What has contributed to it is global terrorism in the last year---even France and Tunisia, to the Middle East, Ukraine and Libya.

The chart is as below, with Melbourne on the top, and Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto, Adelaide and Calgary below it, in that order.

The EIU says that these cities have "relatively few challenges to living standards," and instead experience sound infrastructure, healthcare and a low murder rate.

The least liveable cities are: Damascus, Dhaka, Port Moresby, Lagos and Tripoli.

Most of the cities in Europe and North America have slipped down due to the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the racial conflicts in the US.

"The EIU ranking, which provides scores for lifestyle challenges in 140 cities worldwide, shows that since 2010 average liveability across the world has fallen by 1%, led by a 2.2% fall in the score for stability and safety. While this may seem marginal, it highlights that 57 of the cities surveyed have seen declines in liveability over the last five years," this year's report stated.

However, a few cities have managed to rise above the point, with seven Chinese cities improving their ranking over the past year, "largely because of a lower threat from civil unrest," the report said. "Chinese cities saw liveability fall in the wake of riots and unrest in 2012, most notably due to widespread anti-Japanese sentiment."

Beijing shifted up five places to 69 in the global ranking.

Hong Kong suffered pro-democracy protests, so there was a 3.2% decline in livability, even though most of the protests were peaceful. It still managed to remain three places above its rival Singapore.

"Hong Kong's liveability has been hit by the disruptive protests that took place last year. The city retains bragging rights over its regional competitor Singapore, but by a tiny margin. In fact both cities can still lay claim to being in the top tier of liveability where few, if any, aspects of life are restricted. This has not been the case in other parts of the world, with instability and unrest features undermining the scores of a number of cities globally," said Jon Copestake, editor of the EIU survey.