Top 10 most (and least) livable cities

The latest iteration of The Economist Intelligence Unit's most livable cities index is out.

Without further ado, here are the world's 10 most livable cities:

1. Melbourne (Australia)
2. Vienna (Austria)
3. Vancouver (Canada)
4. Toronto (Canada)
5. Calgary (Canada)
6. Adelaide (Australia)
7. Sydney (Australia)
8. Helsinki (Finland)
9. Perth (Australia)
10. Auckland (New Zealand)

Feel like you've seen this list before? That's because it's been the same the last two years. The theory, according to EIU: "This may reflect renewed stability as some economies begin to recover from the global economic crisis of a few years ago."

The real movement on the list comes further down where some cities have been making gains in their overall scores the last five years on the 140-city list, like Bogota, Colombia (7.9 percent, rank: 111), Harare, Zimbabwe (3.2 percent, rank: 136), and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2.9 percent, rank: 77). While others are seeing significant drops because of increased civil unrest, like Damascus, Syria (-20.4 percent, rank: 140), Tripoli, Libya (-19.9 percent, rank: 133), and Cairo, Egypt (-5.9 percent, rank: 122).

All 140 cities are ranked on five criteria: stability (25 percent of total score); healthcare (20 percent); culture and environment (25 percent); education (10 percent); and infrastructure (20 percent).

Here's how the bottom 10 livable cities shapes up:

131. Tehran (Iran)

132. Douala (Cameroon)

133. Tripoli (Libya)

134. Karachi (Pakistan)

135. Algiers (Algeria)

136. Harare (Zimbabwe)

137. Lagos (Nigeria)

138. Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea)

139. Dhaka (Bangladesh)

140. Damascus (Syria)

But it's not just these cities that are seeing poor livability rankings. The world as a whole has seen livability decrease over the past five years. According to the report, the average global livability score has fallen by 0.6 percent, led by a 1.3 percent decline in the average stability score.

Read more: Economist Intelligence Unit

Photo: Flickr/F.d.W.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com