Zurich took over from Tokyo as the world's most expensive city to live in, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's most recent world-wide cost-of-living survey.

The study, which is published twice a year, tracks the prices of goods and services such as food, transportation, utilities, private schools and domestic help to calculate scores for each city, using New York as its base with a score of 100. Real-estate prices aren't factored into the survey.

Zurich and Tokyo scored 170 and 166, respectively, indicating that they are about 70% and 66% more expensive to live in than New York.

Geneva and Japan's Osaka-Kobe area tied for third place, according to the survey. Overall, the list of the 10 costliest cities is divided equally between Asia and Europe. The European cities are Oslo, Paris and Frankfurt, while Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore round out the Asian portion of the list.

No North American city breaks the top 10. New York dropped 11 spots to a tie for 47th with Chicago and below Los Angeles.

London fell two spots to 17th, tied with Brussels; Wellington, New Zealand; and Adelaide, Australia.

Zurich moved to the top of the list for the first time in at least two decades in part because of the surge in the Swiss franc over the past year, which made goods there more expensive relative to elsewhere, the Economist Intelligence Unit said.

While Japan has long been known as an expensive place to live—Tokyo's gas prices are 71% higher than New York's, for example,—the emergence of Australian cities and Singapore toward the top of the list is a more recent phenomenon.

Just 10 years ago, Singapore, now the ninth most expensive city, according to the survey, was 2% cheaper than New York. Now it is 42% more expensive than New York. In a similar survey last summer by human-resources-consulting firm Mercer, Singapore surpassed Hong Kong for the first time in the cost of living. The Economist Intelligence Unit survey ranked Hong Kong 22nd, on par with Milan and Stockholm.

The change is even more dramatic in Australia. Sydney was 25% cheaper to live in than New York a decade ago, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Today, it's 47% pricier and the seventh costliest in the world.