Vienna held tight to its title as the world’s most liveable city for the second consecutive year, with a score of 99.1 out of 100 in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global liveability index. The index looks at access to health care, education, infrastructure, culture, environment, political and social stability as key components of each country’s ranking. The Austrian capital once again outranked Melbourne, whose seven-year reign it ended in last year’s edition of the index. The other top eight cities — only one of which is European and none of which are African — have remained the same y-o-y, albeit with some minor shuffling of the order.

Environment and culture scores in emerging market cities, including Cairo, have deteriorated and brought down their overall ranking. “A lack of a concerted global effort to tackle climate change risks further downward revisions in these scores, threatening to offset improvements in the other categories, such as education and infrastructure, which remain on a broadly upward trend.”

At the bottom of the index, meanwhile, Damascus continues to hold the lowest ranking, followed by Lagos in Nigeria, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Libya’s Tripoli.