She calls it the United Nations by the sea. And until recently it was one of Melbourne's little secrets. Beaches. Parks. Community. Half an hour to the city by train. Jennifer Williams grew up here and – after a few years slumming it in more fashionable suburbs – she came home to stay.

Williams is part of a shift in Melbourne's centre of gravity. Not so long ago, if you aspired to the good life you looked to the city's affluent southern and eastern suburbs. Now, not so much.

A special report ranking the "liveability" of the city's suburbs – the third commissioned by The Age since 2005 – confirms Melbourne is in the middle of a big realignment. While the old favourites aren't in immediate danger, the city is shuffling its weight from the south side of the river to the north. Turning its gaze from the leafy east towards the funky west.

As a university student in the 1980s, Williams had rented in the usual inner suburbs. Parkville. Armadale. Prahran. But a decade later when it came time to buy, there was no going past her birthplace: Altona. There, people actually smile as she walks down the street, says the retired microbiologist. Sometimes they say hello. "It still has that village feel, even though it's grown."

The Liveable Melbourne study, by Deloitte Access Economics and planners Tract Consultants, ranks each of the city's 321 suburbs according to 15 criteria including crime, transport, access to schools, shops, cafes, parks, and – for the first time – mobile and internet access.

And, in a city gripped by a property frenzy, one of the study's authors wonders whether Melbourne's historical "south of the river" preference might be unwinding.

Suburbs that are equally appealing to live in tend to be cheaper north of the Yarra, says Tract's Adam Terrill​, a town planner. "This survey suggests Melbourne's liveability is rebalancing."

He points to the west's middle ring of suburbs – a band stretching from Williams' beloved Altona through Keilor to Sunshine – that are emerging as enjoyable, desirable and, well, liveable in a way that would have seemed improbable a decade ago.

Which is not to overstate the shift. Altona is ranked only at 102 on the Liveable Melbourne list, albeit up almost 100 places on a decade ago.

It languishes far behind this year's top three – East Melbourne, South Yarra and Toorak.

East Melbourne, now deemed the most liveable suburb in the world's most liveable city, is a thing of beauty; its wide, heritage-listed streets brim with mature trees and immaculate terraces. Though it has almost no shopping, schools or cafes of its own, it simply borrows them from neighbouring Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond.

But a high ranking comes with a high price: East Melbourne's median, according to Domain, is $1.7 million. That compares to $420,000 in the suburb deemed the city's least liveable – Skye, in the city's south-east.

South Yarra ranks as the city's second most liveable suburb. The winner of Deloitte and Tract's previous two studies, it dropped to second chiefly on a technicality. A boundary change shifted the glorious Royal Botanical Gardens into the suburb of Melbourne so the Chapel Street crew couldn't claim it for their own.

While it fell, others rose: North Melbourne (from 56 in 2011 to 10 this year), West Melbourne (172 to 61), Princes Hill (92 to 16, thanks chiefly to its NBN connection), Elsternwick (24 to 6) and Ivanhoe (32 to 8).

The rapid rise of Melbourne's city centre from 26 to 5 highlighted the importance of improvements in tree cover, schools and parks. The city has invested in all three. "It highlights that population growth and high liveability aren't mutually exclusive," says Tract's Adam Terrill.

Docklands rose too. Ten years ago, it ranked 207. This year, 88, with improved trams, telecommunications and shopping. "Docklands has attracted a lot of criticism, but it's improving," says Deloitte Access Economics director Daniel Terrill, a co-author of the report (and brother of Tract's Adam Terrill).

And while most of Melbourne's lower-ranked neighbourhoods can be found on the city's fringes, a cluster in the Dandenongs bucked the trend: Belgrave, Olinda, Kallista and Tecoma did well largely due to their generous parklands, lush tree cover, hills and low crime.

The authors cautioned that many big jumps up or down the ranks followed Bureau of Statistics' boundary changes. Strathmore, for instance, rocketed from 239 to 87 after it was split from Essendon Airport.

Rankings suburbs via the slippery concept of "liveability", is, of course, the result of subjective choices – which is why The Age created, for the first time, a special online calculator. It allows you to check your suburb's rank – according to both the criteria used for the study, and to rank what's important to you to find your ideal suburb. You can also set house prices.

For Altona's Jennifer Williams, that ideal is where she already lives. Lately, she says, she's been noticing the suburb changing as newcomers arrive. "I have been spotting the occasional hipster around here – I think 'Oh no, they're in the supermarket', but apparently we need these people to make your suburb prosperous."

The elevation of  the west and north were thanks to better bus services, more cultural facilities, lower crime and new schools. Which is lucky, given that, according to the state government, nearly 1 million people will move here by 2031, compared with around 680,000 in the city's south and east.

Drive 61 kilometres from Altona to the south-eastern suburb deemed Melbourne's least liveable and it's a gloomier story. Skye fell to the bottom of the list despite its excellent access to the beaches of neighbouring Frankston. It lacks services and infrastructure. The public transport is lousy, there are few parks, few restaurants, and inadequate roads for its growing population, leading to congestion.

But cities change. Twenty years hence, Skye too might be racing up the list. In the mid-nineties Altona was known not for its refinement but its refinery. Maybe someday hipsters will appear in Skye too.