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 other words, are tall buildings a prerequisite to competing in today's global economy? It's an interesting question. And Jason Barr -- professor of economics at Rutgers University-Newark -- does think they are an important ingredient. So much so that he wrote a book on the topic called, Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers. While Jason does acknowledge that not every city needs them, he does suggest that not having them could hinder a global city:
If you look at Paris' global ranking in terms of its importance in the world economy, as measured by the size and number of international firms, it's falling. Paris in 2000 was ranked fourth, and by 2020, it was down to eight, losing out to skyscraper cities such as Singapore and Dubai.
In the last decade, Paris has shrunk by 122,000 residents. As reported by Forbes, "Many of those leaving are choosing either the suburbs or countryside around Paris, or they are relocating to France's smaller cities such as Bordeaux, Lyon, and Toulouse." By limiting its building stock, Paris is driving up housing prices, pushing out residents, and causing suburban sprawl.
While I agree that tall buildings are important "geography-shrinking machines", what we're really talking about is using land more intensely. We're talking about urban density. But you don't necessarily need tall buildings to have high population densities. Consider Barcelona, which is one of the densest cities in Europe, and consider this comparison between Paris (few tall buildings) and Vancouver (more tall buildings).
So is the argument simply that density is good for cities, and that tall buildings are one way to achieve that? Or is it that, now that cities like Paris are built out (albeit at very high densities), the only option for growth is to go up? I guess I'll have to read his book.
“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
--Anthony Bourdain
My general recipe for travel is as follows: I want to see cool architecture, I want to eat good food, and I want to get a local sense for the place. Meaning, I'd ideally like to hang out with locals and learn from them. What's it really like, here?
Because of this, I've never been one to over schedule on trips. There will be things I absolutely want to see and do, but I always want to make sure that there's time for the unknown.
I think you want to walk into places that you don't have on your list, sit at the bar, and have a conversation with the person behind it. You will learn things, and maybe it'll set you on a travel journey that you couldn't have possibly planned back home.
That said, guides are still helpful for things like architecture and food. But I have never found general purpose guides -- like the ones from Frommer's -- to be of any use. They have too much information that isn't curated.
When I was in my early 20s, I used to use the Wallpaper* City Guides. They were small. I would mark them up as I went. And they gave me the list of must-see architecture. More recently, I've been relying on Monocle's Travel Guides. They're great too.
But I am now also a fan of Toronto-based ÅVONTUURA and the architecture guides that they produce. They are simple and beautiful pamphlets that give you a map of each city; a breakdown of contemporary, modern, and historic architecture; a recommended route through the city; and a full list of the important buildings, including their architects.
The founder of Avontuura, Karl van Es, was kind enough to send me their entire set, which as of this month includes new guides for Amsterdam, Berlin, Singapore, and Toronto. Thank you, Karl.
I'm now looking forward to trying one of these out on a future trip. I'm going to use it to decide what architecture I want to visit and, for the rest, I'll just do what I normally like to do -- wing it.
P.S. It took me multiple attempts of tossing these guides onto my kitchen counter in order to arrive at the above photo. I hope you like it.