There is a common narrative that, when it comes time to start a family and have kids, you should probably consider moving to the suburbs. Sure, you'll have a painful commute, but you'll get more space for your money, and maybe you'll end up with better kids.

I don't know, obviously not everyone agrees with this. I certainly don't.

But it is something that commonly happens and, in many cities, it is now happening more often. Here is a map from the Centre for London showing the change in the proportion of households with at least one dependent child from 2001 to 2021:

A darker borough means that it lost households with at least one child. And a lighter borough means that it gained more kids. Why this is concerning is that it means the trendline is toward more, and not less, childless cities. Here's an excerpt from a recent FT article:

A future with dwindling numbers of children is one many cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, are grappling with. In Hong Kong, for every adult over 65 there are, to put it crudely, 0.7 children, and in Tokyo it is even fewer (0.5).

Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. And we know the main drivers:

Randal Cremer is one of several planned primary school closures and mergers in inner London triggered by low birth rates, families moving away because of expensive childcare, Brexit, and parents re-evaluating their lives during the pandemic. The biggest factor, says Riley, is that “housing is just becoming unaffordable”. Philip Glanville, mayor of Hackney, calls it “the acute affordability crisis”.

So how do we start to solve this? Here are a few ideas that we recently talked about on the blog, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. In my opinion, this is a problematic trend that deserves a lot more attention. Because cities are at their best when they work for everyone -- from the young to the old.

Today, June 1, is an important day for crypto and Hong Kong. The city just lifted its crypto ban and is once again allowing retail trading.

Now, there's a lot of speculation about what this will ultimately mean for the city and for Asia, given that Beijing is a crypto hater (all crypto transactions have been banned in China since 2021).

Some think that this could be a leading indicator for a softening Chinese position on crypto; while the cynics think that this reinstatement could be short lived given that Beijing remains a hater.

Whatever the outcome, I think it is noteworthy that Hong Kong is trying to reestablish itself as a global hub for digital assets and that it believes crypto is here to stay.

It is also a good reminder that, even though the herd has moved onto AI, there's still important work happening beneath many of the mainstream headlines.

My own conviction and activities around crypto haven't changed over the last year, and so I'm happy to see cities like Hong Kong working to reassert themselves in this space.

According to this annual survey by Henley & Partners (first chart from Bloomberg), these are the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world when you count the number of high-net-worth individuals (i.e. people with investable wealth greater than US$1 million):

However, if you instead count billionaires, the top city flips from New York City to the Bay Area (which includes San Francisco and all of Silicon Valley). This isn't all that surprising.

Also not surprising is the precipitous decline in the number of HNWIs residing in Hong Kong. From 2012 to 2022, the number declined by 27%. That said, a bunch of other cities fared even worse. The city that lost the most millionaires over this same decade was Moscow. It declined by 44%.

For those of you wondering about Toronto, we placed 12th, just after Chicago, with 105,200 millionaires, 193 centi-millionaires, and 18 billionaires:

The next city in Canada on the list is Vancouver, and following that is Montreal:

It is interesting to see how much further behind Montreal places with these metrics given that it is an urban region with about 1.6x the population of that of Vancouver's.

Also interesting -- given its size and global importance -- is Paris (18th when it comes to HNWIs):

However, when it comes to seasonal draw, Paris is second only to Miami, which appears to be the undisputed global destination for rich people in the winter. Paris has 126 centi-millionaire residents, but during its peak holiday month (presumably summer), this number is believed to increase to over 300:

Finally, looking at Park City, Utah, it has 8 permanent centi-millionaires and this number is thought to increase to over 100 during the winter snowboarding season. And to be clear, this transient population figure only includes people who own a second home there. It does not include rich people paying US$3,700 per night to stay at Deer Valley. That's pretty good for a small town of only 8,500 permanent residents.

To check out the full list of 97 cities, click here.