The Grand Duchy’s capital has kept its place in the top 20% of best cities to live in the world, according to an international research firm.

The Global Liveability Ranking and Report August 2014, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, rates “relative comfort” in five main categories.

“Luxembourg was ranked 25th overall for liveability--joint fourth for stability, joint first for healthcare, joint 64th for education and joint 27th for infrastructure,” a representative of the firm told Delano on Tuesday.

Globally “Melbourne remains the most liveable location of the 140 cities surveyed, followed by the Austrian capital, Vienna. Vancouver, which was the most liveable city surveyed until 2011, lies in third place,” EIU analysts stated in a white paper on the report.

The other cities in the top ten were Toronto, Adelaide, Calgary, Sydney, Helsinki, Perth and Auckland.

The bottom ten cities were Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire, Tripoli, Douala in Cameroon, Harare in Zimbabwe, Algiers, Karachi, Lagos, Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Dhaka and 140th ranked Damascus.

The liveability index is released twice a year and “assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions”, the white paper said. “Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses, from benchmarking perceptions of development levels to assigning a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages.”

Mid-sized cities score higher

The EIU, a sister unit of The Economist magazine, said that “mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density” tend to fare better in the survey, because they offer better access to “recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure”.

Nevertheless, the index has been relatively stable over the past 12 months, the EIU said. Only nine cities changed rankings from the March edition, and only 20 cities changed places over the past year.

Luxembourg City has held 25th place since at least 2010.