Sep 04, 2019 (LBO) – The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka have triggered a downgrade for Colombo city in Global Liveability Index 2019, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest liveability survey showed.
The findings of the survey added that the devastating terrorist attacks in New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the past year are a reminder that threats to security are still apparent, but perceptions of the danger posed by terrorism have diminished in recent years.
"Over the past year, we have observed that average scores for stability have risen, reflecting, in very general terms, a slight diminishing of the perceived threat of terrorism, after a period of acute concern," the survey findings showed.
"Some of these improvements have been considerable but from a very low base, while others have seen smaller improvements to already acceptable scores."
Meanwhile, Vienna remains the most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed by The Economist Intelligence Unit.
After displacing Melbourne from the top spot in 2018, ending a record run of seven consecutive years, Vienna retained its position at the head of the survey in 2019.
The two cities continue to be separated by 0.
7 percentage points, with Vienna scoring 99.1 out of 100 and Melbourne 98.4.
Two other Australian cities feature in the top ten: Sydney (in third) and Adelaide (tenth), while only one other European city, Copenhagen in Denmark (ninth), scores among the best.
The other top-ranked cities are split between Japan (Osaka in fourth and Tokyo in joint seventh) and Canada (Calgary in fifth, and Vancouver and Toronto in sixth and joint seventh, respectively).
The cities within the top ten remain unchanged from our previous update, but there has been some movement in their ranking.
Sydney has risen from fifth to third, thanks to an improvement in its culture and environment score, reflecting an increased focus on combating and mitigating the impacts of climate change, as outlined by the city’s “Sustainable Sydney 2030” strategy.
However, Sydney remains behind its great rival, Melbourne.
With both cities already scoring very highly across all categories, there is only limited potential for Sydney to displace either Melbourne or Vienna at the top of the rankings.
No other city in the top ten saw a change to its score.