Where to live in the world for the best quality of life

Vienna has been named the city offering the best quality of life for the eighth year in a row.

Austria's capital is followed by Zurich, in Switzerland, and Auckland, in New Zealand, in consultancy giant Mercer's Quality of Living Index, which ranks 231 global cities.

Surprisingly, tourist hotspots London, Paris and New York are nowhere near the top 20.

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The French capital comes in at number 38, while its UK counterpart ranks at number 40 and the Big Apple trails four places behind that.

Other UK cities to make the list include Edinburgh (45), Birmingham and Glasgow (joint 53), Aberdeen (58) and Belfast (66).

Each city was assessed in 39 areas, including infrastructure, political stability, access to healthcare, transportation, school quality and risk of natural disaster, before the scores were combined to give an overall figure indicating quality of life.

According to the index, "Birmingham is better than Rome or Los Angeles", says The Sun, while Belfast comes in ahead of more conventionally glamorous locales such as Miami, Prague and Dubai.

Despite having a lower total population than London, Switzerland manages to get three of its cities into the global top ten – Zurich, Geneva and Basel – tying with Germany for most spots in the top ten: Munich, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt all make it.

Auckland and Vancouver are the only non-European cities to make the top ten. In fact, seven of the top ten cities are located within a 300-mile radius of one another.

War-torn nations dominate the bottom end of the scale, with Baghdad rated the world's worst city for quality of life, followed by Bangui, in the Central African Republic, and the Yemini capital Sana'a.

The top cities in the world for quality of life

1 Vienna, Austria

2 Zurich, Switzerland

3 Auckland, New Zealand

4 Munich, Germany

5 Vancouver, Canada

6 Dusseldorf, Germany

7 Frankfurt, Germany

8 Geneva, Switzerland

9 Copenhagen, Denmark

10 Basel, Switzerland