Melbourne has outranked Sydney as Australia’s most liveable city in the annual Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index.

The EIU, a sister organisation to The Economist, ranked 173 cities on factors including health care, culture and environment, stability, infrastructure and education – but not affordability.

Despite receiving perfect scores for healthcare and education, Melbourne fell from third to fourth place globally after losing marks for infrastructure due to “an acute housing crisis” that affected several regions.

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Melbourne received an overall index of 97 while Sydney received an index of 96.6 – falling from fourth to seventh.

“The situation is particularly worrying in Australia and Canada, where the availability of rental properties is at an all-time low and purchase prices have continued to rise despite interest-rate increases,” reads the report.

Vienna topped the list for the third consecutive year, receiving “perfect” scores in four out of five of the categories — the city was marked lower for culture and environment due to a perceived lack of significant sporting events.

Just behind the Austrian capital, Denmark’s Copenhagen retained its second-place position, while Switzerland’s Zurich moved up from sixth place to third on the list.

Melbourne came in fourth place, while Canadian city Calgary tied for fifth place with Swiss city Geneva. Canada’s Vancouver and Sydney were in joint seventh place, and Japan’s Osaka and New Zealand’s Auckland rounded out the top 10 in joint ninth place.

“Global liveability has risen fractionally over the past year but risks to stability remain,” Barsali Bhattacharyya, deputy industry director at EIU, said.

“Still-high inflation accompanied by high interest rates and other economic headwinds led to another year of frequent protests across the world.”

There was little change at the bottom of the list, with Damascus, Syria still ranking as the least liveable in the world, with Libya’s Tripoli, Algeria’s Algiers and Nigeria’s Lagos ranking just above.

The study noted that none of the bottom four cities had seen any improvement in its overall score since 2023.

“Since we conducted our survey, there have been more instances of civil unrest and demonstrations around the world, such as the campus protests across the US, suggesting continuing stress on liveability that is unlikely to ease in the near future,” said Bhattacharyya.

2024 Global Liveability Index top 10

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
3. Zurich, Switzerland
4. Melbourne, Australia
5. Calgary, Canada
6. Geneva, Switzerland
7. Sydney, Australia
8. Vancouver, Canada
9. Osaka, Japan
10. Auckland, New Zealand

– with CNN