Johannesburg — CAPE Town has been ranked by the latest Mercer World-Wide Quality of Living survey as the best city one could live in compared with any other place in the Middle East and Africa.

The city tied Port Louis in Mauritius in 80th spot as the region's city with the best quality of living based on political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services.

Johannesburg slipped down four places to 94 out of 215 cities, but still beat Harare in Zimbabwe, which slipped from 168 last year to 174.

Out of the 25 lowest-ranking cities, 19 are from Africa, including Lagos (198) and Port Harcourt (207), both in Nigeria, and Bangui (214), the largest city in the Central African Republic.

Cities in Europe and Australasia dominated the top end of rankings for overall quality of living. Zurich scored the highest, followed by Vienna in Austria, while another Swiss city, Geneva, came third. Fourth spot was taken by Vancouver in Canada, and Auckland in New Zealand and Dusseldorf in Germany shared joint fifth place.

Honolulu came out tops in the survey of US cities at 28th position, followed by San Francisco at 29. New York was ranked 49, below London (38) in the UK. Australia's top city was Sydney, in 10th position.

The survey was conducted to help governments and companies place employees on international assignments.

"Companies managing a global workforce must take into account a range of factors when structuring remuneration packages for their expatriate employees," said Yvonne Sonsino of Mercer last week.

"Organisations can struggle to find suitably qualified local staff when operating overseas and so rely on benchmark data to ensure the rewards they offer encourage employees with transferable skills to accept international assignments."

In another list, Mercer identified cities with the highest personal safety ranking based on internal stability, crime, law enforcement and international relations. Luxembourg topped this list.