The Economist Intelligence Unit has released it’s annual ranking of most liveable cities, also known as The Global Liveability Index 2021.
“The Liveability Index examines 140 cities worldwide to quantify the challenges presented to an individual’s lifestyle in the past year, for the first time taking into account this disrupting global event.”
The latest ranking is from 2019 as last year’s was cancelled due to COVID19 pandemic.
The ten most liveable cities in the world
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Osaka, Japan
- Adelaide, Australia
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Tokyo, Japan
- Perth, Australia
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Melbourne, Australia
- Brisbane, Australia
Ten of the most liveable cities in Asia
- Auckland, New Zealand (global rank 1)
- Osaka, Japan (global rank 2)
- Adelaide, Australia (global rank 3)
- Wellington, New Zealand (global rank 4)
- Tokyo, Japan (global rank 5)
- Perth, Australia (global rank 6)
- Melbourne, Australia (global rank 8)
- Brisbane, Australia (global rank 10)
- Sydney, Australia (global rank 11)
- Taipei, Taiwan (global rank 33)
For the uninitiated, the EIU’s liveability ranking and overview quantify the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle in 140 cities worldwide.
Each city is assigned a score for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors.
This is done across five broad categories of stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
COVID19 has propelled New Zealand’s Auckland to first place replacing Austria’s Vienna, which has actually crashed out of the top 10.
Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, also entered the top 10.
In fact, 6 of the top 10 cities in the March 2021 survey are in New Zealand or Australia.
In EIU’s 2021 rankings, New Zealand, Australia and Japan fared the best in the five categories.
The the EIU said in a statement:
“Cities across the world are now much less liveable than they were before the pandemic began, and we’ve seen that regions such as Europe have been hit particularly hard.”
A key reason for Auckland standing best was New Zealand’s elimination of COVID-19 within its borders.
This isolation was helped by its geographic isolation as the EIU notes in a statement:
“New Zealand’s tough lockdown allowed their society to reopen and enabled citizens of cities like Auckland and Wellington to enjoy a lifestyle that looked similar to pre-pandemic life.”
Australia’s other cities Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth have performed better than Melbourne which used to be at rank 2 and has now fallen at rank 8.
The index gave Melbourne 100 per cent in infrastructure and education, while its healthcare (83.3) and culture and environment ratings (88.2) fell.
WATCH VIDEO:The Global Liveability Index 2021: How the Covid-19 pandemic affected liveability worldwide
