Even Sydney’s most loyal subjects have gripes with the city. She’s often congested, public transport is a hot damn mess when it rains, the rich yachting community gives lowly landlubbers a headache, and some of the trendy city happenings are overrated. But, we’re pleased to say that the industrious capital of New South Wales appears to be forging ahead in a positive direction.
According to the annual Global Liveability Index, Sydney is the third most liveable city in the world right now. Sure, Melbourne has scraped in ahead of us scoring silver, but we’ll let them have it, because we’re already feeling pretty chuffed about our recently earned titled as the safest city in Australia.
The index, which is evaluated by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked 140 countries out of a score of 100 according to the broad areas of stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. So perhaps the almost-finished Light Rail is finally coming through for us.
The very friendly Vienna once again beat Melbourne to the punch, taking out top gong with a near-perfect score of 99.1 to Melbourne’s 98.4, while our beloved Emerald City came in just 0.2 points behind our southern sister.
What’s bumped us up from not even making the winners podium and coming in fifth last year? Supposedly our culture and environment score has pushed us up to the level of the big happy living dogs, with efforts for improving sustainability through community involvement at its core.
Other countries that rounded out the top ten were Osaka (fourth), Calgary (fifth), Vancouver (sixth), Toronto and Tokyo (equal seventh), Copenhagen (ninth) and Adelaide (tenth).
We’re just happy to number among these grand cities – and yes, we are aiming for more points in 2020 with every grin.