The 10 most livable cities in the world based on healthcare, infrastructure and more—not a single one is in the United States
In June, The Economist Intelligence Unit released its 2025 Livability Index, which ranks the world's most livable cities.
The index scores 173 cities on 30 indicators divided into five categories, with each one being given a weighted percentage:
Each city was given a score of 1-100 — one is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.
EIU's report states that the average score for livability across the 173 cities in the index stands at 76.1 out of 100, which is unchanged from 2024. Despite that, the report states that "livability remains under pressure amid geopolitical tensions, civil unrest and widespread housing crises."
After spending three years as the world's most livable city, Vienna was outranked by Copenhagen for this year's top spot. The Danish city got perfect scores for stability, education and infrastructure and an overall average score of 98.0.
Ana Nicholls, EIU's Director of Industry Analysis, tells CNBC Make It that the reason Copenhagen ranked No. 1 was partly due to its higher score in the culture and environment category, which encompasses aspects such as bars, restaurants, sporting events, and occasions.
Western Europe remains the best-performing region for livability across four of the five categories and was only outpaced by North America in education.
The United States didn't have any cities make the top 10 or the top 20 and that has a lot to do with its higher crime rates, lower social stability and infrastructure, Nicholls says.
"It's worth saying that smaller cities in the U.S. do much better than bigger cities and that's true overall across the livability ranking," she says. "Places like New York tend to much worse, but that said, U.S. cities have one area where they excel and that is in terms of education."
The U.S. city that ranked the highest was Honolulu, Hawaii, at No. 23. There were a total of 21 American cities in the overall ranking.
Nicholls also pointed out that of the 21 U.S. cities ranked, 14 rose in the index, but mainly because the rankings for other cities around the world went down.
"The U.S. does have quite a strong education system, so it is more about the availability and access to healthcare and that being relatively equitable," she adds. "One other lesson that the U.S. could learn is a bit more investment in infrastructure."
1. Copenhagen, Denmark2. Vienna, Austria and Zurich, Switzerland (tie)4. Melbourne, Australia5. Geneva, Switzerland6. Sydney, Australia7. Osaka, Japan and Auckland, New Zealand (tie)9. Adelaide, Australia10. Vancouver, Canada
Tied for the No. 2 spot are Vienna, Austria and Zurich, Switzerland, each with a score of 97.1.
Vienna scored higher than Zurich in the infrastructure category, while Zurich scored higher in culture and environment.
Nicholls says the only reason Vienna dropped out of the No. 1 spot was due to and the discovery of a planned attack on a city train station earlier this year, which led to a decrease in the stability category score.
"In one way that didn't affect livability, but the threats made a difference in terms of the stability bit of our ranking," she adds. "[On the other hand], Switzerland does very well in terms of healthcare and education because they have very good systems in place."
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