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
Resonance Consultancy, which is a placemaking firm that we have spoken about before on the blog, is working on a new America's Best Cities report. And as part of this, they've been surveying Americans about which cities they would most like to live in and visit. The result is a list of the most "desirable" US cities that looks like this:
New York
Miami
Los Angeles
Las Vegas
San Diego
Chicago
Seattle
San Francisco
Houston
Denver
The long and the short of it seems to be that people generally want to live in the places where they like to travel. But what's interesting is that if you look at the US cities that have actually grown the most in absolute numbers over the last few years (specifically April 2020 to July 2023), the list transforms into this:
Dallas (+462,639)
Houston (+360,649)
Phoenix (+219,008)
Atlanta (+200,414)
Austin (+189,896)
Tampa (+167,672)
San Antonio (+145,884)
Charlotte (+144,767)
Orlando (+144,542)
Jacksonville (+107,396)
The only city that shows up on both is Houston.
What this suggests is that cities very much have brands. And when you ask people where they'd ideally like to live, they think of the sexiest ones. Places like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and so on. But it when it comes to actually moving somewhere and paying for a home, there are clearly other realities to consider -- the most important of which is probably affordability.
Leisure travel, according to Resonance, is growing:
In fact, spending on leisure travel and recreation has outpaced the overall growth in consumer spending over the last decade, and inflation-adjusted spending on leisure activities as a share of overall consumer spending grew from 9.5% in 2013 to nearly 13% by 2022. This means that the travel and tourism industry is getting a growing share of a growing pie, which bodes well for the long-term future of those hotels and destinations that cater primarily to leisure travelers.
And so are blended trips (trips that combine business and leisure). Though the way people are going about it has evolved:
What used to involve adding a day or two on the weekend to a weekday business trip has shifted to the mixing of business and pleasure throughout the week. With a greater percentage of the workforce in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. only going into the office 2-3 days per week, workers from these countries are free to blend their travel for up to a week. And with as much as a quarter of professionals in the U.S. now working remotely, a whole new class of nomadic travelers has emerged who are able to travel anywhere, anytime—as long as their accommodations have adequate high-speed internet and appropriate workspaces.
At the same time, cities are really clamping down on short-term rentals, which is a common way people do blended trips. Resonance believes this will create new opportunities:
But while increased regulation and enforcement of the sector will wipe out the businesses of many “professional” hosts and investors, it’s also creating new opportunities for cities and developers to create new neighborhood-oriented hotels that satiate travelers’ desire for local experiences while also being additive to the quality of life of local residents.
It might be the case that these two things are inversely correlated. More people are traveling for fun and for work, and so now cities are trying to manage that demand; more travel leads to more regulation. Whatever the case, I do agree that this is an important consumption trend.
My working theory is this: if money wasn't an object, a lot of people would love to have homes all around the world and live in multiple places. I certainly would. And the list of places is already in my phone. But since this isn't practical for most, we have Airbnbs, neighborhood-oriented hotels, Soho House global memberships, and the ability to buy fractions of second homes.
These solutions all respond, at least partially, to our desires for new experiences and for a deeper attachment to places. But now that tech is expanding the reach of cities, these desires are becoming further untethered. And so my view is that there's going to be a lot of opportunity in the world of "making people feel like they're global citizens."