There are countless rankings of cities out there. And most of them probably don't mean very much. But the concept of a "global city", as coined by Saskia Sassen in the early 90s, is still immensely fascinating to me. And that's because there is, in fact, an order. There are cities that are less and more important to the global economy.
To this end, Resonance Consulting has just released their annual ranking of the world's best cities. And this year, they've introduced something new to their methodology: perception data. For this, they partnered with Ipsos and asked more than 22,000 respondents across 30 countries the following three broad and open-ended questions:
What are the top 3 towns or cities you would most like to live in someday?
What are the top 3 towns or cities you would most like to visit in the next 12 to 24 months?
What 3 towns or cities do you believe currently offer the best job opportunities?
The intent with these questions was to not anchor people to a specific list of places, and to not necessarily anchor people to big global cities. Maybe the best job opportunities are believed to be in small towns that most people aren't thinking about. The result is that thousands of different towns and cities were mentioned during the survey period.
While this didn't necessarily impact the cities and usual suspects that you would expect to see in a ranking like this -- cities like London, New York, and Paris -- it did change certain things and offer some interesting insights. For example, the strong global perception of Sydney helped to move it into the top 10 for the first in the ten-year history of this report.
On the other end of the spectrum, negative sentiment (outside of China) toward Hong Kong caused the city's ranking to drop precipitously. It is now ranked 97th, behind cities like Naples (Italy), Birmingham (UK), and Rochester (US). Singapore, in case you're wondering, is ranked 5th:
Broadly speaking, the perception data also served to remind us that we continue to have a bias toward cities. When people are asked where they want to live, visit, and work, they still think of the world's biggest and most important places. So despite the rise of decentralizing technologies (i.e. Zoom) and the bad things that happened to cities as a result of the pandemic, big cities remain at the center of the global economy.
This is not at all surprising.
Cover photo by Aaron Gilmore on Unsplash
In 2019, London implemented something known as an Ultra-Low Emission Zone (or ULEZ). The intent was to reduce the number of older and higher-polluting vehicles entering and driving around the city.
It works like this: If you have a vehicle that does not meet the ULEZ emission standards, you need to pay a daily charge of £12.50. This applies all day every day (except Christmas) and it is in addition to London's congestion charge.
It's also done entirely through license plate cameras. If you enter the zone, don't have an approved plate, and don't pay the charge within a few days, you get sent a fine. The result is that London's ULEZ is now the largest clean air zone in the world (at least according to London).
It also achieved its intended purpose. In 2017, only 39% of cars entering London would have met the ULEZ emission standards. Today the number is over 95%. Meaning, most people don't actually pay the charge.
At the same time, nitrogen dioxide levels in the zone have more than halved, improving overall health outcomes. It's a perfect example of taxing the things you want less of. What's also interesting is that there were positive second-order consequences.
Vehicle traffic as a whole declined by about 9% in the first year, with no evidence of displacement to other areas. And according to this research study, it actually encouraged more kids to walk and take other forms of "active transport" to and from school.
Seems like a no brainer to me.
Roncesvalles Avenue is a successful north-south main street in the west end of Toronto. I say successful, because it is truly a great street. It has transit, bike lanes, a fine-grained built form, and lots of interesting retail:
But it is somewhat unique in that a large section of it is a one-sided retail street. Meaning, it looks like this:
This obviously isn't a fatal flaw. It remains a wonderful street. And there are lots of examples of thriving one-sided retail streets. Ocean Drive in Miami Beach immediately comes to mind (notwithstanding the fact that locals tend not to go to it).
But conventional retail wisdom does dictate that two sides are better than one. Consider this 2023 report by Cushman & Wakefield ranking the top global main streets across the world. All of the streets that I have been to before are two-sided:
5th Avenue in New York between 49th and 60th (above 60th is, incidentally, when the street converts to single-sided because of Central Park)
Montenapoleone in Milan
The main street of Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong
New Bond Street in London
Avenues des Champs-Élysées in Paris
Grafton Street in in Dublin
Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona
Bloor Street in Toronto
These are all two-sided retail streets.
None of this is to say that the west side of Roncesvalles has nothing going on. It has a diverse mixture of uses, including churches, libraries, apartments, and many other things. But I think there is still an argument to be made that it has been hamstrung by restrictive zoning.
That said, Roncevalles is defined as a "major street" in Toronto's Official Plan and so it does fall under the city's new Major Street Study. Maybe that changes things.