McKinsey recently published a report called Digital globalization: The new era of global flows.

The overarching thesis is that we are transitioning to a data-driven global economy:

“Flows of physical goods and finance were the hallmarks of the 20th-century global economy, but today those flows have flattened or declined. Twenty-first-century globalization is increasingly defined by flows of data and information. This phenomenon now underpins virtually all cross-border transactions within traditional flows while simultaneously transmitting a valuable stream of ideas and innovation around the world.”

One of the benefits of this shift is that it has become easier for emerging economies and individuals from all around the world to participate.

Of course, not all countries and cities are participating equally. In their report, McKinsey ranks the top cities according to five global flows. In each case a proxy was used:

“Unfortunately, data on global flows are not available at the city level. However, we have obtained data that serve as proxies for each of our five global flows. Container port volumes approximate goods flows; airport passenger volumes serve as a proxy for goods, service, and people flows; the ranking of cities in the Global Financial Centers Index by the Z/Yen Group provides an indication of financial flows; the number of foreign-born residents in a city measures people flows; and Internet bandwidth approximates data flows.” 

Using this methodology, they believe that the world only has 8 truly global cities right now: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Dubai. They are the colored cities listed below:

I always take these city rankings with a grain of salt. This stuff is not easy to quantify and a lot depends on the methodology that you use. 

For instance, Atlanta sits on the top of “goods, services, and people” because it has the busiest airport in the world according to passenger volume. (It’s the primary hub of Delta Air Lines.) But is that enough to assert that Atlanta is #1? Maybe. Maybe not.

In any case, the report is packed full of information. If you’d like to take a look, click here.

If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a supporter of congestion and road pricing. Any valuable good or service, such as a road, that’s offered for all intents and purposes as free, will never be able to keep up with demand. You need to price it.

However, the political risk associated with implementing something like this has made it such that few cities around the world have done it. London and Singapore are the two most common examples.

The more populist solution is to simply build more roads and highways, even though study after study shows that this doesn’t work. If it did, we would have already solved the problem of traffic congestion. And we most certainly haven’t.

Which is why I’m excited about a new startup that recently launched called Urban Engines. Their solution is twofold. It’s based on incentives and on treating people and cars in cities as sensors that feed back data into their network. Here’s a brief video. If you can’t see it below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaCp5Tl-uAc]

The data piece is almost a no-brainer (provided they can get the data). The more data we can collect about the way people and cars move in a city, the more they’ll be able to optimize and manage the flows. The possibilities are endless.

But what I found really interesting is their incentives based approach. Typical road pricing methods are, one could argue, a punitive approach. As traffic increases so does the price of the road. (I like to look at it as efficient pricing.)

With Urban Engines, their approach is the opposite: it’s to reward people–through money and lotteries–for driving during off peak times. It’s smart because selling a reward program to cities will be a lot easier than selling a new charge.

Overall, this a great example of how startups are stepping up to solve some of our most important societal problems. For more information on Urban Engines, check out their website and this writeup on CityLab.

Yesterday evening I was reading the Spring Summer Candy GPS Report put out by London-based property developer Candy & Candy. If you’ve never heard of Candy & Candy, then I guess you haven’t been in the market for a £60m apartment. Candy & Candy are the developers behind One Hyde Park in London, which is said to be the world’s most expensive residential development.

But what is interesting about a project like One Hyde Park is that it’s really only possible in a global city, like London, that attracts a massive amount of foreign investment. A project like One Hyde Park is a possibility of globalization, not a result of local employment numbers.

Which is why if you take a look at the Candy GPS report, you’ll see that their interest is in tracking the habits of ultra-high-net-worth-individuals (UHNWIs)–those with wealth exceeding US$30 million. Last year, the world was estimated to contain almost 200,000 of them, with a combined wealth of almost $28 trillion. This number is expected to rise to $40 trillion by 2020.

Now, you may not be in the market for the most expensive apartment in the world, but I thought it would be interesting to talk about where this money is coming from and which cities it’s going into–at least when it comes to real estate.

The top 3 countries for UHNWIs investing in real estate are Germany, Japan and the United States, respectively. The US has the most ultra rich people, but they have a lower propensity to invest in real estate compared to Germany. Nonetheless, these are the countries that dominate.

But who are the recipients of this money?

Well, first of all, it’s going into cities. But it’s flowing into a small number of them. Cities representing 5% of the world’s population are said to attract over 50% of the real estate investments made by the richest people on the plant. 

According to Candy GPS, the top cities are Hong Kong, London, Moscow, Singapore and New York, respectively. Hong Kong sits at the top, largely because of money flowing in from mainland China, but London is said to have the broadest investment reach.

So there you have it, a quick overview of where the ultra rich buy real estate.