You can put as much stock into these quote-unquote “Liveability” indexes as you please, but the bottom line is it gives certain cities the bragging rights they so desperately crave. And while Melbourne has long been the undisputed King of Australian towns in that regard for the better part of two decades, suddenly the Victorian capital has a rather unlikely competitor: Sydney.
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The Economist released the 2019 edition of its annual Global Liveability Ranking survey overnight, with Melbourne maintaining the second place overall finish that it first achieved in 2018.
But the real surprise packet is the frankly inexplicable resurgence of Sydney as, apparently, one of the world’s most liveable burgs. The much-maligned New South Wales capital not only managed to better its 2018 mark of fifth overall, but it climbed all the way up to number three.
Third place.
Sydney – lockout law-addled, rail network-imploding, second airport in fucking Badgery’s Creek-lookin’, can’t get bottle of cleanskin red after 10pm-ass SYDNEY – is now the third most liveable city in the world.
Roll that one around in the old brain box for a hot moment or ten.
Sydney shot up the rankings with an overall index score of 98.1 out of 100, besting fancied international cities like Osaka, Vancouver, and Copenhagen in the process.
The meteoric and frankly improbable rise up the rankings is due to, according to The Economist, an overall improvement in Sydney’s “culture and environment score,” which saw “an increased focus on combating and mitigating the impacts of climate change, as outlined by the city’s ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030’ strategy.” So it’s good to know The Economist straight-up didn’t bother to look at any Australian policy above the municipal level.
On the overall list, Sydney now sits just 0.3 points behind Melbourne, who scored an overall rank of 98.4 which included perfect marks in categories such as healthcare, education, and infrastructure (lol sure), and a near-perfect mark in culture and environment.
Above them, Vienna retains its most liveable city crown after the Austrian city upended Melbourne for the top spot on last year’s list.
Cop the ten most – and least – liveable cities according to The Economist below.
2019 TEN MOST LIVEABLE CITIES
- Vienna, Austria (99.1)
- Melbourne, Australia (98.4)
- Sydney, Australia (98.1)
- Osaka, Japan (97.7)
- Calgary, Canada (97.5)
- Vancouver, Canada (97.3)
- Toronto, Canada (97.2)
- Tokyo, Japan (97.2)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (96.8)
- Adelaide, Australia (96.6)
2019 TEN LEAST LIVEABLE CITIES
- Damascus, Syria (30.7)
- Lagos, Nigeria (38.5)
- Dhaka, Bangladesh (39.2)
- Tripoli, Libya (40.4)
- Karachi, Pakistan (40.9)
- Port Moresby, PNG (41.0)
- Harare, Zimbabwe (42.6)
- Douala, Cameroon (44.0)
- Algiers, Algeria (44.1)
- Caracas, Venezuela (46.9)
