Melbourne the best place to live in the world: int’l expats

MELBOURNE, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) — An international survey of people living outside their home country has revealed that Melbourne as the best place in the world to live.

The survey, published by global network and information website InterNations on Thursday, asked 14,000 expatriates in cities all over the world to rate 30 aspects of their new home, including quality of life, ease of settling in, cost of living and weather.

Despite a poor rating in affordability, Melbourne’s good ratings in work-life balance, leisure activities, friendly locals and weather were enough to ensure Australia’s second-largest city was ranked best among the 85 cities surveyed.

Sydney was the only other Australian city to be surveyed, ranking eighth overall.

Houston ranked second with Madrid, Dusseldorf, Singapore, Vienna, Munich, Mexico City and Toronto rounding out the top 10.

Vera Grossman from InterNations said that expats in Sydney were often unhappy with their financial situation which cost the city a better ranking.

“Not only are expats apparently happier in Melbourne, but they are more satisfied with their personal finance,” Grossman said on Thursday.

“Melbourne comes in on average 14th place in the Personal Finance Index, whereas Sydney does far worse, ranking 30th out of 35 cities.”

Grossman said the overall satisfaction of expats living in Australia was above average.

“30 percent of all respondents in Australia are so happy with their lives, that they have obtained the citizenship of their destination, noticeably more than the global average of 11 percent,” Grossman told News Limited.

In a separate survey, conducted by travel booking website TravelBird, Melbourne was ranked the 20th most inspiring summer city and 69th most inspiring city overall of the 85 ranked.

“Inspiration and being inspired is something travellers always have near the top of their priorities when looking into a vacation,” Symen Jansma, CEO of TravelBird, told News Limited.

“We conducted this study to help travellers find destinations to enrich their vacations and leave long lasting memories.”