Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

Tag: world cities

  • A new typology of cities

    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:

    image

    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.

  • Capital of the world

    If you had to pick one, which city would you consider to be the “capital of the world?” There are no other instructions. Just select whatever first comes to mind. If for whatever reason you can’t see the poll below, click here.

    If you’re curious about where the above list of cities came from, they’re simply all of the Alpha++, Alpha+ and Alpha cities according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC). The list may be a few years old though.