Vienna was once again named the most liveable city in the world in The Economist’s Global Liveability Index. While Melbourne, which came in second, lost out to the Austrian capital city for the second year running, Australia has the honour of having three cities named in the Top 10 list. Sydney was placed third and Adelaide came in at 10th position.

For seven years starting from 2010, Melbourne was the undisputed leader of the most liveable cities in the world until it was toppled by Vienna last year. However, Sydney made good progress this year by surging from fifth place to third, thanks to an improved environment score, courtesy of the Sustainable Sydney 2030 strategy. Melbourne was ahead of Vienna in its culture score, however concerns about crime lost the Australian city the pole position.

The Economist’s Global Liveability Index ranks 140 global cities on the basis of 30 factors spread across five categories – stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Vienna scored a near-perfect 99.1 out of 100.

Other global cities in the Top 10 include Osaka, Japan (4), Calgary, Canada (5), Vancouver, Canada (6), Toronto, Canada (7), Tokyo, Japan (8) and Copenhagen, Denmark (9).

The list of the most liveable cities in the world was dominated by Australia, Canada and Japan.

However, popular destinations such as Paris, London and New York didn’t fare too well in this list with rankings of 26, 48 and 58 respectively.

Pictured: The city of Adelaide. Image credit: Tourism Australia