It’s that time of the year again when the brain boxes at some large, academic institution create a fancy index full of number of buzz-word measures to make the ultimate tier list of planet Earth’s cities.
This time it’s the turn of the boffins at Oxford Economics to release their annual list of the world’s cities from ‘best to worst’.
And, to their praise, they haven’t just ranked the top 10 cities in the world, but have created an index of 1,000 cities, all with their own score, and an interactive map to boot – come on, who doesn’t love an interactive map?
This means we can do some serious data extrapolation – we’ve got lists for the UK, for Europe, for Western Europe, the environment, economics and so on.
The study takes the 1,000 largest cities in the world, so don’t be offended if you were looking for Salisbury or St Davids in the list.
You might be wondering what makes a city ‘the best’ or ‘the worst’, well, in this study cities are ranked on five factors: Economics, governance, human capital, quality of life and environment.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the numbers.
The best in the world
- New York, USA
- London, UK
- Paris, France
- Seattle, USA
- San Francisco, USA
- Dublin, Ireland
- Boston, USA
- San Jose, USA
- Tokyo, Japan
- Zurich, Switzerland
The lowest cities in the index
- Sokoto, Nigeria (1000th)
- Sultanpur, India (999th)
- Weinan, China (998th)
- Port-au-Prince, Haiti (997th)
- Guigang, China (996th)
- Maiduguri, Nigeria (995th)
- Novokuznetsk, Russia (994th)
- Dezhou, China (993rd)
- Kano, Nigeria (992nd)
- Zaria, Nigeria (991st)
The best cities in the UK
As per the rankings, only one city made it into the top 10, with four UK cities breaking into the top 100 and all 26 making the top 300.
London, unsurprisingly, was the highest of all UK cities, being named second best in the world.
The second highest placed UK city was Edinburgh in 71st place, followed by Manchester in 90th.
Cambridge rounded out the top 100 in exactly 100th spot.
All UK cities enjoyed a governance score of 80.5 (out of 100) as well as high environment scores, virtually all in the 80s and above.
London was the only city in the world to receive a perfect 100/100 for human capital, which is the economic value of a worker’s knowledge, skills, experience, and health that helps them produce goods or services.
Meanwhile, the report singled out Manchester as a “city to watch” going forward, describing the city as “booming” – yes R kid.
Top 10 British cities
- London (2nd)
- Edinburgh (71st)
- Manchester (90th)
- Cambridge (100th)
- Leeds (103rd)
- Glasgow (108th)
- Bristol (112th)
- Oxford (115th)
- Birmingham (118th)
- Newcastle (150th)
Bottom 10 British cities
It is worth noting that, while this is a ‘bottom 10 list’, in reality being in the top 300 of all cities in the world is still a pretty solid achievement.
Many of these places have lower rankings because their economic activity is much lower than the top 10 British cities.
However, quality of life and environment is still fairly high and consistent across the country. (And yes, we know Middlesbrough, Bournemouth and Northampton are not technically ‘cities’ by the British definition).
- Middlesbrough (285th)
- Portsmouth (260th)
- Kingston upon Hull (258th)
- Derby (247th)
- Bournemouth (234th)
- Aberdeen (217th)
- Northampton (187th)
- Coventry (186th)
- Nottingham (182nd)
- Brighton (181st)
Top 10 European cities
- London, UK (2nd)
- Paris, France (3rd)
- Dublin, Ireland (6th)
- Zurich, Switzerland (10th)
- Oslo, Norway (11th)
- Stockholm, Sweden (15th)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (18th)
- Munich, Germany (19th)
- Amsterdam, Netherlands (21st)
- Berlin, Germany (22nd)
Bottom 10 European cities
Russia did the cleansweep on this one…
- Lipetsk, Russia (990th)
- Samara, Russia (985th)
- Astrakhan, Russia (978th)
- Orenburg, Russia (975th)
- Volgograd, Russia (950th)
- Perm, Russia (942nd)
- Ryazan, Russia (928th)
- Tula, Russia (927th)
- Ulyanovsk, Russia (923rd)
- Yaroslavl, Russia (921st)
Bottom 10 Western European cities
It is worth noting that, while all these cities found themselves at the bottom of the Western European category, they scored very highly on quality of life, environment and governance, only dropping in score due to not having the same economic activity as other big cities.
- Palermo, Italy (516th)
- Catania, Italy (510th)
- Lens, France (453rd)
- Bari, Italy (442nd)
- Nancy, France (412th)
- Naples, Italy (403rd)
- Caen, France (391st)
- Halle an der Saale, Germany (373rd)
- Wolfsburg, Germany (367th)
- Rouen, France (361st)
Cities to watch
Europe
Eindhoven
Manchester
Tallinn
Toulouse
Warsaw
North America
Boise
Durham
Edmonton
Jacksonville
San Antonio
Latin America
Brasília
Lima
Medellín
Monterrey
Santiago
Asia Pacific
Bengaluru
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Shenzhen
Tashkent
Africa
Accra
Cairo
Dakar
Luanda
Nairobi
Middle East
Abu Dhabi
Dubai
Riyadh