Melbourne, Australia has been ranked as the most “liveable” city in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The EIU’s benchmark annual report titled “The Global Liveability Report 2017,” ranks 140 cities in order of best living conditions. The rankings are calculated by scoring 30 qualitative and quantitative factors, such as health care, education, and infrastructure, that provide the best and worst living conditions for people. The scores from each factor are then put together and weighted to give a final score of between 1-100, with 100 being ideal and 1 being intolerable.
Melbourne came out on top again.
Melbourne’s 97.5 score is down to perfect assessments in health care, education, and infrastructure, as well as hitting over 95 in stability, and culture and environment. Vienna in Austria only missed the top spot by 0.1 percentage points overall. The cities that fared the worst were naturally those rocked by war, terrorism and civil unrest.
Damascus scored only 30.2 overall as the largest city in Syria continues to undergo brutal fighting between the government and Islamist rebels.