Vienna is the best city in the world to live while war-torn Baghdad is the worst, a survey said Wednesday, putting Europe at the top of the rankings with Asia and Africa trailing.

The Austrian capital "retains the top spot as the city with the world's best quality of living," British consultancy firm Mercer said in its 2010 Quality of Living Survey.

Swiss cities Zurich and Geneva followed in second and third places respectively, while Vancouver in Canada and Auckland in New Zealand were joint fourth.

For its annualsurvey, Mercer assessed the quality of living in 221 cities worldwide, measuring them against New York with an index score of 100 points as the base city.

Vienna, which also took the number one spot last year, scored a total 108.6 points, while Baghdad scored the lowest with just 14.7 points.

European cities continued to dominate the top 25 cities in the survey, Mercer said, while Canadian cities also had a strong showing.

Among cities in Britain, London ranked number 39, Birmingham 55 and Glasgow 57.

In the United States, the highest ranking entry was Honolulu in 31st place, followed by San Francisco in 32nd.

Singapore was the top-scoring Asian city in 28th place, followed by Tokyo in 40th.

Baghdad ranked 221st, remaining at the bottom of the list. It was followed by Bangui in the Central African Republic, N'Djamena in Chad, Khartoum in Sudan and Tbilisi in Georgia.

Mercer also awarded cities eco rankings based on water availability and drinkability, waste removal, quality of sewage systems, air pollution and traffic congestion.

Calgary in Canada came top of this list, followed by Honolulu in second place and Ottawa and Helsinki in joint third place.

Port-au-Prince in Haiti ranked at the bottom of this table, Mercer said.

(Read by Lee Hannon. Lee Hannon is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.)

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(Agencies)