While Australia’s Melbourne tops the list of most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed, Austrian capital Vienna comes second in the list, both separated only by 0.1 percentage points. Canadian city Vancouver holds the 3rd place followed by Toronto.

Canadian city, Calgary, shares fifth place with Adelaide. With the increasing instability across the world has brought a remarkable change in the list causing volatility in the scores of many cities. 

In the list of the poorer-scoring cities, 13 continue to occupy the very bottom tier of liveability, where ratings fall below 50% where life is extremely difficult. Groups like Boko Haram act as a constraint to improving stability in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, tops the list of the least liveable cities.

The increasing number of incidents causing death of black people either in police custody or shot on the street in US cities have also led to further declines in scores.

French capital Paris is another city that has seen a sharp decline in its ranking, mainly because of increasing number of terrorist attacks taking place in the city, and in other parts of the country, over the past three years.