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If you utter the phrase 'most liveable city' to a Melburnian, you might notice them slightly wince, or perhaps imperceptibly shudder. The annual worldwide ranking has become a bit of a touchy subject. Once upon a time, our city was the darling of the Global Liveability Index – Melbourne was crowned the world’s most liveable city for a whopping seven years in a row. But much has changed since then (after current reigning champion Vienna dethroned us in 2018), and post-pandemic, our city shockingly slumped to tenth place on the list. Thankfully, we've still got a top five spot in 2024, although but the bad news is we've been usurped of our third place ranking from last year by yet another European country.
If you have no idea what we're talking about: each year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) releases its Global Liveability Index, ranking 173 cities around the world from the best to worst living conditions. It looks at five key metrics, including healthcare, culture, education, infrastructure and the environment. The results have just dropped for 2024, with Vienna, Austria retaining its title as the most livable city for the third year running. Denmark’s Copenhagen secured the second spot, followed by Switzerland’s Zurich in third place.
Melbourne has dropped from being ranked in third place last year, to fourth this year, being overtaken by a mere 0.1 of a point. Honestly, rude. But there is valid, important reasoning behind our city dropping in the ranking. In the EIU's report, it explained that Australia's housing crisis impacted the infrastructure scores of both Melbourne and Sydney. The New South Wales capital fell several places, from fourth place in 2023 to seventh now.
"We have downgraded overall infrastructure scores for Australia, owing to an ongoing housing crisis that has led to an all-time low availability of rental properties in many of the cities," the Economist Intelligence Unit said. We don’t need an intelligence unit to tell us that.
Melbourne and Sydney both scored 96.4 out of a possible 100 for infrastructure and also had matching scores for healthcare (100), education (100) and stability (95). However, Melbourne edged out Sydney in the culture and environment categories, with Melbourne scoring 95.8. Three other Australian cities made it into the top 20, with Adelaide placing 11th, Perth 15th and Brisbane 16th.
While it's a matter of pride that Melbourne retains its high ranking on the liveable cities list, in reality it's great to be included in the top ten, considering the high calibre of locations included. However, we wouldn't mind claiming that top spot once again, for old times' sake.
Here are the top ten cities on the 2024 EIU Global Liveability Index:
- Vienna, Austria
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Melbourne, Australia
- Calgary, Canada
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Sydney, Australia
- Vancouver, Canada
- Osaka, Japan
- Auckland, New Zealand
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