Thaindian News

Dhaka, Aug 31 (IANS) Dhaka has been rated third least liveable city in the world in a survey of 140 cities worldwide by a UK-based market research company.

In 2009, Dhaka stood second while Harare topped the list of the least liveable cities, bdnews24.com reported Tuesday quoting the survey by UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit.

Melbourne has been rated the best city in the world to live in beating Canada’s Vancouver after almost a decade.

Vancouver, which topped the annual Global Liveability Survey since 2002, fell to third behind Austrian capital Vienna this year, while India’s commercial hub Mumbai was at 116th.

Zimbabwe’s capital Harare was the least liveable city, just ahead of Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby.

Cities were scored on political and social stability, crime rates, access to quality health care, cultural events, the environment, education and the standard of infrastructure.

Living standards in the Bangladesh capital has been said to be deteriorating gradually with unplanned urbanisation, lack of utilities and burden of overpopulation.

Besides those, the problems of transport, environment and safe drinking water, law and order have pushed the city near the bottom, the news web-portal said.

Vancouver missed out on the top spot because its infrastructure score had fallen due to periodic closures of a key motorway.

Australian cities featured prominently in the top 10, with Sydney ranked sixth and Perth and Adelaide in joint eighth place, according to the survey.

Canada also did well, with Toronto and Calgary holding fourth and fifth places respectively. Helsinki in Finland (seventh) and New Zealand’s Auckland rounded out the top 10.

The survey company said scores in Europe had been pushed slightly down by the eurozone crisis, while the Arab Spring had affected ratings in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Greek capital Athens dropped five places to 67th due to recent government cutbacks and protests.

Among other well-known cities, Paris came 16th, two places ahead of Tokyo. The top-ranked American city was Honolulu which came 26th, while London was a lowly 53rd, just behind Singapore, acording to the survey.

Cities were scored out of 100 and the report noted that the top 10 cities were only separated by 1.8 percentage points.

The liveability quotient assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses.

The survey originated as a means of testing whether human resource departments needed to assign a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages, the report said.