fall in the most recent rankings. “Paris remained stable for several years but has, this year, dropped ten places in the overall ranking,” said Mercer. “The drop was essentially due to the terrorist attacks in 2015. However, it is important to highlight that safety issues are a very highly weighted factor within the ’basket’ so any small adjustments can have a big impact on the ranking.” Auckland in New Zealand was the highest ranking English-speaking city in the survey, in third place, followed by Vancouver in fifth. Australian cities also perform very highly in the survey, with Sydney 10th and Melbourne 15th. The Economist has consistently ranked Melbourne as the world’s most liveable city, although its survey has been criticized as too Anglocentric. War and political unrest are behind all the worst-ranked cities in the world. Surprisingly, Damascus is named as only the seventh worst, ranked better than not just Baghdad but also Bangui in Central African Republic, Sana’a in Yemen, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Khartoum in Sudan and N’Djamena in Chad.