The third edition of Savills' annual Tech Cities report is now out. Savills is a global real estate company headquartered in London and a few years ago they started looking and what makes a successful "tech city." As always, you should take these rankings with a healthy dose of scepticism. But this one is based on over 100 individual metrics across 6 main categories:
Business environment (such as the size of the financial services industry)
Tech environment (such as the amount of inward VC investment)
City buzz and wellness (is it a cool place to live?)
Talent Pool (is the city creating and attracting young/smart talent?)
Real estate costs
Urban mobility
Here are the top 30 cities for tech and startup companies:
New York takes the top spot, supposedly because of its deep talent pool and position as one of if not the capital the world. But my friends in the Bay Area tell me that their housing shortage is also starting to impact SF's tech dominance.
Generally, the report finds that the above "tech cities" should see their GDP rise by 36% over the next decade, compared to 19% for other developed cities. I'm not sure how much of this has to do with tech, but the above list does differ from what you'd see in a more conventional global cities index. Here you have Austin ahead of global cities such as Hong Kong. And you have Toronto ahead of cities like Tokyo and Paris.
One takeaway that shouldn't come as a surprise to readers of this blog is the rise of Chinese cities in the index. Beijing is ahead of New York, London, and San Francisco by a wide margin in terms of annual VC investment. And Chinese cities as a whole are starting to take a greater share of global VC dollars (second chart below).
If you'd like to download a PDF of the full report, you can do that here.
Image: Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently published their annual study looking at all of the 200+ meter tall buildings completed over the last year.
143 were completed around the world. The all-time record was 147, which was in 2017. Last year, 18 “supertalls” were also completed. A supertall building is generally defined as having a height of 300m or more.
The tallest building completed in 2018 was China Zun in Beijing. Pictured above. It is 527.7m tall (to tip), but the occupied height is 513.5m.
It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and looks like a Chinese finger trap. All iconic buildings deserve an endearing nickname, right?
Below are a few interesting charts from the report. The first is the total number of tall buildings over 200m from 1920 to 2019. At whatever point they chose in the 1920s, there were only 2. Things sure changed starting in the 1980s.
The third edition of Savills' annual Tech Cities report is now out. Savills is a global real estate company headquartered in London and a few years ago they started looking and what makes a successful "tech city." As always, you should take these rankings with a healthy dose of scepticism. But this one is based on over 100 individual metrics across 6 main categories:
Business environment (such as the size of the financial services industry)
Tech environment (such as the amount of inward VC investment)
City buzz and wellness (is it a cool place to live?)
Talent Pool (is the city creating and attracting young/smart talent?)
Real estate costs
Urban mobility
Here are the top 30 cities for tech and startup companies:
New York takes the top spot, supposedly because of its deep talent pool and position as one of if not the capital the world. But my friends in the Bay Area tell me that their housing shortage is also starting to impact SF's tech dominance.
Generally, the report finds that the above "tech cities" should see their GDP rise by 36% over the next decade, compared to 19% for other developed cities. I'm not sure how much of this has to do with tech, but the above list does differ from what you'd see in a more conventional global cities index. Here you have Austin ahead of global cities such as Hong Kong. And you have Toronto ahead of cities like Tokyo and Paris.
One takeaway that shouldn't come as a surprise to readers of this blog is the rise of Chinese cities in the index. Beijing is ahead of New York, London, and San Francisco by a wide margin in terms of annual VC investment. And Chinese cities as a whole are starting to take a greater share of global VC dollars (second chart below).
If you'd like to download a PDF of the full report, you can do that here.
Image: Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) recently published their annual study looking at all of the 200+ meter tall buildings completed over the last year.
143 were completed around the world. The all-time record was 147, which was in 2017. Last year, 18 “supertalls” were also completed. A supertall building is generally defined as having a height of 300m or more.
The tallest building completed in 2018 was China Zun in Beijing. Pictured above. It is 527.7m tall (to tip), but the occupied height is 513.5m.
It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and looks like a Chinese finger trap. All iconic buildings deserve an endearing nickname, right?
Below are a few interesting charts from the report. The first is the total number of tall buildings over 200m from 1920 to 2019. At whatever point they chose in the 1920s, there were only 2. Things sure changed starting in the 1980s.
Supposedly all of this will make it the largest airport in the world, which is pretty impressive considering Beijing Capital International Airport is already one of the busiest in the world. It too moves around 100 million passengers a year and is likely to overtake Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta in the near term (if it hasn’t already).
But in addition to being the biggest and baddest, two other things stand out to me about the design of Beijing Daxing.
The first is its starfish design. This was done to minimize the amount of walking between security and gate. Check-ins happen in the middle of the starfish and then the most you’ll ever have to walk is 600m (to end of one of the limbs). That’s in line with what most people would consider a reasonable urban transit radius.
The second is the fact that the check-in area provides an aerial view of the gates below. You can see this layering in the photos from the Atlantic. This was done to create a visual connection between passengers and their family and friends. Usually, the goodbye waves happen at or before security. Here you get a bit more time. (Will security be an issue?)
For the full set of photos from the Atlantic, click here. I have a thing for airports, so I thought this was a great set.
Image: Wang Mingzhu via the Atlantic
That exponential growth happens to coincide with tall building growth in Asia and in particular China. The next few charts show (1) the handover from North America to Asia; (2) completions per year (broken down by talls and supertalls); and (3) completions by China, I mean country, last year.
The full 2018 year in review report can be found here.
Image: CTBUH
Supposedly all of this will make it the largest airport in the world, which is pretty impressive considering Beijing Capital International Airport is already one of the busiest in the world. It too moves around 100 million passengers a year and is likely to overtake Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta in the near term (if it hasn’t already).
But in addition to being the biggest and baddest, two other things stand out to me about the design of Beijing Daxing.
The first is its starfish design. This was done to minimize the amount of walking between security and gate. Check-ins happen in the middle of the starfish and then the most you’ll ever have to walk is 600m (to end of one of the limbs). That’s in line with what most people would consider a reasonable urban transit radius.
The second is the fact that the check-in area provides an aerial view of the gates below. You can see this layering in the photos from the Atlantic. This was done to create a visual connection between passengers and their family and friends. Usually, the goodbye waves happen at or before security. Here you get a bit more time. (Will security be an issue?)
For the full set of photos from the Atlantic, click here. I have a thing for airports, so I thought this was a great set.
Image: Wang Mingzhu via the Atlantic
That exponential growth happens to coincide with tall building growth in Asia and in particular China. The next few charts show (1) the handover from North America to Asia; (2) completions per year (broken down by talls and supertalls); and (3) completions by China, I mean country, last year.
The full 2018 year in review report can be found here.
Image: CTBUH
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