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Singapore ranks 35th in world's most liveable cities list

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Singapore has come out ahead of Hong Kong in a ranking of the world's most liveable cities, due mainly to education improvements.

The Republic rose 11 spots to 35th, while Hong Kong slipped two places to 45th in the annual league table complied by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Melbourne was named the world's most liveable city for the seventh straight year, while Damascus in Syria came in last on the list of 140 cities surveyed.

The EIU ranks cities by assigning each a rating for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

The ratings are then compiled and weighted to give a score out of 100.

Mr Stefano Scuratti, who leads the EIU's public policy, economics and politics consulting team in South-east Asia, said Singapore's ranking is in line with a trend that has seen it improve by 17 places over the past five years.

Improvements in indicators related to education were the main driver of this, he said.

While Singapore performed strongly across most liveability metrics, it did less well in the culture and environment domain, which measures elements such as the availability of sports and cultural events, he added.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's slide was attributed to "the aftermath of the Umbrella Revolution, which highlighted people's unease with the recent political developments following the proposed reforms to the electoral system", said Mr Scuratti.

Among major cities with declining scores, only Paris - hit by a spate of recent terror attacks in and around the city - recorded a worse slump than Hong Kong.

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