Melbourne in Australia has been named the most liveable city in the world for the sixth year in a row by The Economist. The Global Liveability Ranking 2016 has placed Vienna in Austria and Vancouver in Canada second and third respectively. The index, which was influenced by factors such as terrorism, has ranked Damascus in Syria the least liveable city.

• Vancouver was the number one city before being overtaken by Melbourne in 2011. Sydney fell four places from seventh in 2015 to 11th in the 2016 survey “owing to a heightened perceived threat of terrorism”. It’s the second blow to Sydney’s self confidence in a week.the city fell from first to second place on Conde Nast’s 2016 list of the friendliest cities.

• Melbourne maintained its overall liveability score of 97.5, determined by its score across five broad categories of stability (95), healthcare (100), culture and environment (95.1), education (100) and infrastructure (100).

• According to the individual rankings, just 0.1 percentage points separate Melbourne from Vienna, because Melbourne scored marginally higher in the culture and environment category.

• There are only 3.3 points between Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia’s lowest-ranked city, in 16th place. Hobart, Darwin, and Canberra were not included in the rankings.

• The rest of the top 10 was Perth in Western Australia in seventh, Auckland in eighth, Helsinki in ninth and Hamburg 10th. That meant six of the top 10 were in Australia or Canada, both wealthy, educated countries with a population density of 3.1 and 3.9 people per square kilometre.