Melbourne has been crowned the globe’s most liveable city for the third time in a row, nudging out Austrian capital Vienna.
In the review of 140 cities, Victoria’s capital was given perfect scores for health care, education and infrastructure.
Meanwhile four other Australian cities made this year’s top 10, including Adelaide (number 5), Sydney (number 7) and Perth (number 9).
The concept of liveability is simple: it assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses. The survey originated as a means of testing whether Human Resource Departments needed to assign a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages. While this function is still a central potential use of the survey, it has also evolved as a broad means of benchmarking cities. This means that liveability is increasingly used by city councils, organisations or corporate entities looking to test their locations against others to see general areas where liveability can differ.