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Melbourne’s record-breaking seven years as the world’s most liveable city – as measured by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Global Liveability Index – has come to an abrupt end this year for one primary reason, a factor that’s important to tourists and residents alike.

The reason is crime.

The city which beat Melbourne into first place, incidentally, is one of Europe’s most wonderful and cultural capitals: Vienna.

It’s not that Melbourne has a lot of crime. On world standards, the opposite is true: it’s generally safe. And crime in Melbourne has not increased. It’s just that Austria’s capital has even less crime and its crime-rate has fallen.

Talking on ABC Radio Melbourne, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Simon Baptist confirmed that Vienna’s score improved because its crime rate fell.

“Because crime is weighted more highly in the survey… that is what allowed Vienna to tick over Melbourne.”

Both cities saw an improvement in their score this year. But Vienna, a city that lives in the mind of everyone who visits it, improved a little more than Melbourne.

Melbourne and Vienna are separated by less than one point. Vienna scored 99.1% and Melbourne scored 98.4%.

Melbourne came second this year and Sydney came fifth, giving Australia two cities out of the world’s top five, an outstanding performance. Adelaide came 10th, giving Australia three cities out of the top 10.

Vienna by night

The top five were:

  • Vienna, Austria
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Osaka, Japan
  • Calgary, Canada
  • Sydney, Australia

In this region, Perth and Auckland were each elbowed out of the top 10 world cities. Auckland slipped from 8th to 12th and Perth moved from 7th to 14th. Brisbane was 22nd. Cities don’t have to do any worse than last year to fall in the rankings – it’s often just because other cities improve more. The same trend saw Helsinki move from 9th to 16th and Hamburg slide from 10th to 18th. Copenhagen came 9th.

The ABC pointed out that while Vienna regularly tops a more extensive ranking of cities, compiled by consulting firm Mercer on quality-of-life criteria, this is the first time the Austrian capital has topped the EIU’s survey, now in its 14th year.

Medium-sized, not-too-crowded cities in wealthy countries tend to do well.

The “wooden spoon” – the title of least liveable city in the world – was Damascus, capital of Syria. Damascus is very historic. It’s just that there’s a war going on in Syria and the country is on the “Do not travel” list compiled by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Two other cities, only marginally better than Damascus in the liveability league, are Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and Lagos in Nigeria.

Written by Peter Needham