>>> sorted(cityPopulation.iteritems(),key=lambda (k,v): v[0],reverse=True) #1990
[('C', [30, 10, 20]), ('B', [20, 30, 10]), ('A', [10, 20, 30])]
>>> sorted(cityPopulation.iteritems(),key=lambda (k,v): v[2],reverse=True) #2010
[('A', [10, 20, 30]), ('C', [30, 10, 20]), ('B', [20, 30, 10])]
Note in python 3 you can’t automagically unpack lambda arguments so you would have to change the code
sorted(cityPopulation.items(), key=lambda k_v: k_v[1][2], reverse=True) #2010