Each year, The Economist publishes a ranking of the cities with the best living conditions.
In 2024, the Liveability Index saw slight improvements despite geopolitical conflicts, civil unrest, and housing crises.
This is partly due to advances in healthcare and education in a number of cities in developing markets.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, Vienna has been crowned the world’s most liveable city, with an impressive score of 98.4 points.
The Austrian capital has come first three years in a row thanks to its high scores in the categories of stability, infrastructure, education and healthcare.
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The Danish capital of Copenhagen and the Swiss city of Zurich are the next two cities to round off the podium.
Although both Sydney and Melbourne in Australia and Vancouver in Canada remain in the top ten, all three cities have seen their infrastructure scores drop due to their respective housing crises. For this reason, Toronto in Canada fell to rank 12 in 2024.
At the bottom of the list are Damascus in Syria, Tripoli in Libya, and Algiers in Algeria.
The Ukrainian city of Kiev also features in the bottom 10, having been added back to the index last year after it was removed due to Russia’s invasion in 2022. It ranks 165th, with a score of 26.8.
The study is based on the “Global Liveability Index“, which determines and compares the varying quality of life of each city’s residents, grouped under five subcategories: infrastructure, healthcare, culture and environment, education and stability. The full list comprises 173 cities.
