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| 1. | Brandon Donnelly | 14M |
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| 6. | Ev Tchebotarev | 170.5K |
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| 9. | William Mougayar's Blog | 28.4K |
| 10. | Empress Trash | 19.8K |
Earlier in the week, my friend Rodney Wilts of Theia Partners sent me a JLL report called, World Cities: Mapping the Pathways to Success. I am admittedly only getting around to it now.
The report proposes a new typology of world cities that looks like this:

It is based on 10 overall categories of cities, grouped into 4 main buckets. The first bucket is “Established World Cities”, within which there is the “Big Seven”, and then the “Contenders.”
The Real Estate Highlights that accompany each category of city is a good place to start if you’re looking to do a quick scan of the report.
Here’s a taste:
One-quarter of all capital invested in commercial real estate globally currently lands in one of the “Big Seven” cities. And London and New York are easily at the top.
Cities that recently graduated from “New World City” status – namely Toronto, San Francisco, Sydney, and Amsterdam – are all struggling to address housing and infrastructure deficits.
“Lifestyle” cities – such as Vancouver, Auckland, and Oslo – are some of the most active investment markets. Biggest rental growth for prime offices (since 2000) in the “New World Cities” category.
Click here for the full report.

In Edward Glaeser’s book, Triumph of the City, he argues that the average temperature in January is the single best variable to predict which U.S. cities have grown the most over the last century. Indeed, from July 2015 to July 2016, 10 of the 15 fastest growing large metro areas in the U.S. were in the south. Follow the sun and sprawl.
Given this phenomenon, I thought it would be interesting to look at the world’s most influential cities (i.e. global cities) through this lens. Because let’s face it, New York and London aren’t all that warm in January.
Below are the top 25 global cities (taken from A.T. Kearney’s 2018 Global Cities Report), along with their average January temperature (taken from here). Note, there are two rankings. On the left is their global cities index. And on the right is their global cities outlook, which evaluates current potential. Cities that improved their economics & governance made the biggest leap on the right.


Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.
In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.
Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):

Earlier in the week, my friend Rodney Wilts of Theia Partners sent me a JLL report called, World Cities: Mapping the Pathways to Success. I am admittedly only getting around to it now.
The report proposes a new typology of world cities that looks like this:

It is based on 10 overall categories of cities, grouped into 4 main buckets. The first bucket is “Established World Cities”, within which there is the “Big Seven”, and then the “Contenders.”
The Real Estate Highlights that accompany each category of city is a good place to start if you’re looking to do a quick scan of the report.
Here’s a taste:
One-quarter of all capital invested in commercial real estate globally currently lands in one of the “Big Seven” cities. And London and New York are easily at the top.
Cities that recently graduated from “New World City” status – namely Toronto, San Francisco, Sydney, and Amsterdam – are all struggling to address housing and infrastructure deficits.
“Lifestyle” cities – such as Vancouver, Auckland, and Oslo – are some of the most active investment markets. Biggest rental growth for prime offices (since 2000) in the “New World Cities” category.
Click here for the full report.

In Edward Glaeser’s book, Triumph of the City, he argues that the average temperature in January is the single best variable to predict which U.S. cities have grown the most over the last century. Indeed, from July 2015 to July 2016, 10 of the 15 fastest growing large metro areas in the U.S. were in the south. Follow the sun and sprawl.
Given this phenomenon, I thought it would be interesting to look at the world’s most influential cities (i.e. global cities) through this lens. Because let’s face it, New York and London aren’t all that warm in January.
Below are the top 25 global cities (taken from A.T. Kearney’s 2018 Global Cities Report), along with their average January temperature (taken from here). Note, there are two rankings. On the left is their global cities index. And on the right is their global cities outlook, which evaluates current potential. Cities that improved their economics & governance made the biggest leap on the right.


Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.
In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.
Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):

First of all, it’s interesting to see San Francisco jump so significantly in their outlook ranking. This has everything to do with tech and innovation. It’s also important to note that a handful of the above cities are located in the southern hemisphere, so “average January temperature” doesn’t mean the same thing (probably should have normalized to their winter).
Montreal wins the award for the coldest city in this ranking. And there’s really only one city, Singapore, with a tropical climate. Though there are others, such as Hong Kong and Sydney, that would fall under subtropical. All of this isn’t enough for us to start inferring anything, but perhaps colder and more temperate climates aren’t such a bad thing for economic growth.
The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.
But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.
Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.
First of all, it’s interesting to see San Francisco jump so significantly in their outlook ranking. This has everything to do with tech and innovation. It’s also important to note that a handful of the above cities are located in the southern hemisphere, so “average January temperature” doesn’t mean the same thing (probably should have normalized to their winter).
Montreal wins the award for the coldest city in this ranking. And there’s really only one city, Singapore, with a tropical climate. Though there are others, such as Hong Kong and Sydney, that would fall under subtropical. All of this isn’t enough for us to start inferring anything, but perhaps colder and more temperate climates aren’t such a bad thing for economic growth.
The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.
But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.
Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.
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