It’s official, Manchester is one of the best places to live.
Not that we didn’t already know that, but it’s always nice to have a statistic or two to throw in a doubter’s face should the situation require it.
The proof comes in the form of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Livability Index, which ranks 140 cities on a range of factors, including political and social stability, crime, education and access to healthcare.
And although our fair city didn’t make the top 10, it did manage to rise 16 places this year to the rank of 35th, putting it ahead of London by 13 places, which according to the BBC is the widest the gap between the two cities has been since the survey began twenty years ago.
Manchester even earned a special mention in the index overview, along with Paris, as both cities recorded the biggest improvements over the past 12 months, both in overall scores and stability ratings.
The overview said:
Isn’t that just the Manchester way?
At the top of the list, Austria’s capital, Vienna, was named most liveable of the 140 cities surveyed for the first time in this survey’s history. A long-running contender to the title, Vienna has succeeded in displacing Melbourne from the top spot, ending a record seven consecutive years at the head of the survey for the Australian city.
At the other end of the scale, war-torn Damascus in Syria was ranked the least liveable city, followed by Dhaka in Bangladesh and Lagos in Nigeria.
The overview said:
“The Middle East, Africa and Asia account for the ten lowest-scoring cities in the survey where violence, whether through crime, civil insurgency, terrorism or war, has played a strong role.”
The ten most liveable cities in 2018
1. Vienna, Austria
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Osaka, Japan
4. Calgary, Canada
5. Sydney, Australia
6. Vancouver, Canada
7. Tokyo, Japan
8. Toronto, Canada
9. Copenhagen, Denmark
10. Adelaide, Australia
The ten least liveable cities 2018
1. Damascus, Syria
2. Dhaka, Bangladesh
3. Lagos, Nigeria
4. Karachi, Pakistan
5. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
6. Harare, Zimbabwe
7. Tripoli, Libya
8. Douala, Cameroon
9. Algiers, Algeria
10. Dakar, Senegal