World's 'Most Livable Cities' Now Face Security Risks

Copenhagen rose to first place in a global livability ranking, after security concerns nudged down other cities in Western Europe.

Austria's capital, Vienna, lost its top spot as the world's most livable city due to recent terrorism scares, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2025 Global Livability Index. A bomb threat ahead of Taylor Swift concerts in 2024 and the uncovering of a planned attack on a city train station earlier this year caused a sharp drop in the city's stability score, the report said.

Copenhagen had the same score as last year, but has been largely untouched by the unrest affecting its regional peers, scoring the maximum points for stability, along with top marks in education and infrastructure.

The Economist's annual ranking is just one narrow way of defining "livability," and has been criticized for omitting environmental health factors. Such rankings also reduce cities down to data points that obscure individual preferences - and demographic differences in how people experience a place.

In Copenhagen's home country of Denmark, for example, the government has enacted a law that designates neighborhoods with more than 50% non-western residents as "ghettos" that can be subject to demolition; the law was recently deemed discriminatory by an advisor to EU's top court.

Still, the rankings can be effective at pointing to trends. Western Europe's average score for stability declined from last year as the region grappled with a rise in terrorism threats, riots, crime and anti-Semitic attacks, and the region accounted for six of the ten biggest fallers in the ranking. These included the UK cities of London, Manchester and Edinburgh following violent far-right protests in 2024.

Canadian cities Calgary and Toronto were also among the biggest decliners, as strains in the country's national health service took a toll. Vancouver is now the only Canadian city remaining in the top ten.

Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia recorded the biggest improvement, climbing to 135th place, driven by the kingdom's investments in expanding access to health care and education.

At the other end of the scale, Damascus in Syria remains in the last place. Its livability score was unchanged due to ongoing instability and poor health care, despite a regime change in 2024.

The EIU ranks 173 cities based on five categories: stability, education, infrastructure, culture and environment, and health care.

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