VIENNA IS STILL the world’s most liveable city for a third year in a row, while Dublin slipped down the rankings to 39th on the list, according to a new survey from the Economist.

In the Economist’s annual Global Liveability ranking, the Austrian capital again came first, followed by the Danish capital Copenhagen and Zurich in Switzerland.

Melbourne in Australia and Calgary in Canada completed the top five in the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Global Liveability Index.

Dublin was among the cities to experience the biggest drop in ranking.

Tel Aviv in Israel saw the largest decline, plummeting 20 places down to 112th. Israel is currently waging war on neighbouring Palestine following Hamas-led attacks in the country’s south last October. 

“Western Europe remains the most liveable region, but has seen a decline in stability scores amid increasing instances of protests…. on a variety of issues,” said a statement from the EIU.

Those issues included the rise of far-right extremism, EU agricultural policy and anti-immigration sentiment, EIU said in a press release.

Vienna got full scores in terms of its stability, health care, education and infrastructure.

Overall global liveability was up slightly over the past year, it added.

But the “improvement is only marginal, held back by geopolitical conflicts, civil unrest and a housing crisis across many of the cities” amid inflation.

Continuing stress on liveability was “unlikely to ease in the near future,” it said.

The capital of war-torn Syria, Damascus, was again ranked the least liveable city.

Kyiv also stayed in the bottom 10 in the rankings as the Ukraine war rages on following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

The index ranks the liveability of 173 cities across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

Vienna was already the world’s most liveable city between 2018-20 and again since 2022.

With reporting from AFP