Toronto, 2nd most expensive city to live in North America. How much cost gas in your area?

Here are the top 20 most expensive cities, with their 2007 places in brackets:

1 (1) Moscow

2 (4) Tokyo

3 (2) London

4 (10) Oslo

5 (3) Seoul

6 (5) Hong Kong

7 (6) Copenhagen

8 (7) Geneva

9 (9) Zurich

10 (11) Milan

11 (8) Osaka

12 (13) Paris

13 (14) Singapore

14 (17) Tel Aviv

15 (21) Sydney

16 (16) Dublin

16 (18) Rome

18 (12) St. Petersburg

19 (19) Vienna

20 (20) Beijing

Toronto - Gas prices and taxes are up and even buying a home has become more expensive - so it comes as no surprise that Toronto is one of the most expensive places to live in North America, according to a new survey.

The ranking is from the annual Mercer's cost of living survey from the UK.  This year's results have Toronto vaulting over L.A. and Miami - making it the second most expensive city to live in North America, just behind New York.

The survey looked at how expensive it is for companies to relocate employees, said Danielle Bushen, who is the principal at Mercer in Toronto. 

"Canada has historically been a very cost-effective place to send people. We have pretty good low cost of living and relatively high quality of living so it's easy to get employees to take assignments in Canada.  Now I think we have a situation where relative to other major centres, we are not as cheap as we use to be."

Bushen explained the rising Canadian dollar has pushed many Canadian cities up the ranks.

"The US dollar's dropped a lot over the last year - its weakened quite a bit.  And that's had an impact on the entire ranking.  And so Canadian cities - in particular - have come up the ranking.  The Canadian dollar has become relatively stronger in the global arena.  Many cities around the world have the appearance of being relatively more expensive on a global scale."

The only North American city to crack the global top 50 was New York.

But, Toronto jumped 28 spots from last year to land at number 54 on the global scale.

Moscow remains the most expensive city to live in in the world.  While Tokyo, London, Oslo in Norway and Seoul in South Korea rounded out the top five.