Four Australian Cities in Top 10 Best Places to Live

For the third year running, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria and the second most populous city in Australia, was named the most liveable city, by the Global Liveability Survey 2013, released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The other three Australian cities that made it to the top 10 include Adelaide, Sydney and Perth.

Scoring parameters

Melbourne made it to the top beating 140 other cities that were covered under the Global Liveability Survey. The survey covered ranking of cities in five individual categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

The Survey compiled scores in each category and weighted to give a total out of 100. A score of 100 is considered ideal and 1 intolerable.

Based on the survey parameters, Melbourne scored the highest at 97.5 followed closely by Austrian capital, Vienna with a score of 97.4.

Among the other Australian cities making it to the top 10; Adelaide with the score of 96.6 was ranked 6th; Sydney stood 7th with a score of 96.1 and Perth stood 9th with a score of 95.9.

Expat perspective

From an expat perspective, all the four Australian cities among the top 10 of the Global Liveability Survey offer a wide variety of work opportunities and multicultural living environment.

With a highly diversified economy, Melbourne is a leading centre of finance, manufacturing, Information Technology, research, biotechnology, education, logistics and tourism. Some of Australia's largest corporations have their headquarters located in Melbourne. These include five of the ten largest companies in the country based on revenue and four of the largest six companies based on market capitalisation.

The city is also the centre of Australia's automotive industry with manufacturing facilities of Ford and Toyota located here. Melbourne is also a major financial centre with two of the big four banks, NAB and ANZ having their headquartered located in the city. Interestingly, Melbourne is home to the largest number of the 340,000 Indians living in Australia.  Indians have outnumbered Italians to form the city's largest non-Anglo community.

The centre for manufacturing and economic growth

Adelaide, Sydney and Perth are also major centres of commerce and industry in Australia.  Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is the country centre for manufacturing, defence technology, high tech electronic systems and research.

Sydney, Australia's most well-known and populated city is the country's financial and economic hub providing approximately 25 per cent of the country's total GDP. The Australian Securities Exchange and the Reserve Bank of Australia are located in Sydney. The city also houses the headquarters of 90 banks and more than half of Australia's top companies. The city is also hub of Australian tourism industry and the country's most visited attractions are located here.

Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, is the centre of the country's mining industry. The city's central business district has benefited from the regions mining boom to focus on services related to the resources industry.