Vancouver beats Calgary as most livable city in North America

This time off the ice: Vancouver has beaten Calgary in an annual list of the most livable global cities.

That’s according to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2025 Global Livability Index, which ranked 173 cities around the world on a number of factors like health care, education, stability, infrastructure, and environment.

Vancouver has been ranked as the city in North America with the highest quality of life, passing Calgary, which previously outranked B.C.’s largest city in 2024.

Vancouver is 10th on the worldwide ranking with 95.8 points. In the previous year, the city was ranked higher, and landed fifth — tied with Sydney, Australia.

While Sydney maintained its score of 96.6 points from last year, Vancouver had to give up 0.8 points.

Globally, cities such as Melbourne, Australia, and Osaka, Japan, are ranked higher than Vancouver.

At the top, however, cities in western Europe are battling for the podium places.

Copenhagen, Denmark, reclaimed the crown as “the most comfortable city to live in” from last year’s winner, Vienna, Austria.

With an overall score of 98, Denmark’s capital convinced the jury with its high points in the stability, education, and infrastructure categories.

Even though Vienna was ranked higher in health care, its overall score is 0.9 points lower than Copenhagen’s.

Zurich, Switzerland, follows in third place and gets the bronze medal.

Meanwhile, Calgary dropped from fifth place in 2024 to 18th in this year’s ranking.

The primary reason for the drop in Calgary’s slot and Vancouver’s total point count is the city’s declining health care score, the index results stated.