Vienna, Austria, ranked number one for the third consecutive year on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2024 Global Livability Index. The spot was top-ranked out of 173 cities across five categories. Cities are judged on stability, healthcare, education, culture/environment, and infrastructure.

Vienna received its high ranking due to its “perfect” 100 scores in the stability, healthcare, education, and infrastructure categories. The only place the Economist Intelligence Unit’ (EIU) noted that the city could improve was regarding its culture and environment. The Austrian capital scored 93.5 in the latter category due to “a lack of major sporting events.”

Overall, Western Europe was deemed quite livable. Four out of the index’s top 10 ranked cities were in the region. Vienna was first, followed by Copenhagen, Denmark, in second place. Switzerland’s Zurich was in third, while Geneva ranked fifth.

Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland in Australia ranked within the top 10, as did Calgary and Vancouver in Canada and Osaka in Japan.

“The 30 western European cities in this year’s ranking reported an impressive average score of 92 out of 100. However, the region’s overall score has slipped since last year, owing to a deterioration in the stability category, amid increasing instances of disruptive protests (such as in Germany, Ireland and Belgium) and crime,” noted the EIU.

How Are The World’s Most Livable Cities Ranked?

The index measures the EIU’s judgment of how comfortable a city’s living conditions are. There are 30 “indicators” divided into the five aforementioned categories on which the authority bases its ranking.

“Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable. For qualitative indicators, a rating is awarded based on the judgement of in-house analysts and in-city contributors. For quantitative indicators, a rating is calculated based on the relative performance of a number of external data points,” explained the source. “To provide points of reference, the score is also given for each category relative to New York and an overall position in the ranking of 173 cities is provided.”

The ratings are quantified on a scale from one to 100, where one is considered intolerable and 100 is ideal.

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