Every year, as the calendar edges toward its close, a familiar ritual unfolds: the publication of global city rankings. Newspapers and magazines summarize which cities have climbed toward urban perfection and which have slipped down the ladder. The cycle is predictable, but its meaning is far less so. These rankings claim to distil the complexity of urban life into a neat hierarchy of winners and losers. They promise objectivity and global relevance, yet their outcomes are remarkably consistent: European and Australian cities dominate, accompanied by a sprinkling of outliers such as Singapore or, occasionally, a North American metropolis deemed sufficiently “liveable.” But what do these rankings actually measure? And—more importantly—what do they miss?
Most major city indices evaluate factors such as safety, healthcare, infrastructure, political stability, environmental quality, education, culture and leisure. The categories appear reasonable at first glance, even universal. After all, who would argue against clean air or good hospitals? Yet, the choice of indicators reflects not a global consensus on what makes a city good, but rather a specific worldview shaped by the priorities of multinational corporations, Western policy think tanks and consultancy firms. These indices often originate from institutions concerned primarily with risk, efficiency and predictability—attributes valued by investors, expatriate managers and globally mobile professionals. The city rankings function, consciously or not, as tools for economic decision-making, offering an index of where capital and talent can most comfortably reside.
This methodological orientation is also the source of their embedded biases. Indicators that reflect Western urban ideals—orderly streets, high-quality public services, transparent governance, low crime rates—are foregrounded. Meanwhile, qualities that define cities outside the Western tradition, such as dense social networks, informal economies, vibrant street life or shared spaces born of necessity, are rarely captured. A city like Lagos or Mumbai may offer extraordinary levels of entrepreneurial energy and communal resilience, but the metrics of stability, infrastructure or formal employment overshadow those qualities. Western cities, built on decades of welfare investment and shaped by planning systems oriented toward predictability, naturally perform better when the criteria privilege exactly those elements.
But the more profound issue lies not in the rankings themselves, but in the implicit argument they make: that cities can be universally measured by a single yardstick. Urban life is plural, culturally rooted and historically contingent. The highest-ranked cities are not necessarily the best—rather, they best approximate a particular normative model of how cities should function. They excel at delivering comfort, order and amenities to relatively affluent residents. Yet the same cities often struggle with issues that the rankings do not capture: social inequality, exclusion of migrants, monotony of urban form, the loss of cultural diversity and the high cost of living. A city may be extremely “liveable” for a select subset of the population while becoming increasingly inaccessible for others.
If we imagine an alternative model, the resulting hierarchy of cities would look markedly different. Instead of prioritizing stability and service provision for mobile elites, we could evaluate a city’s capacity to generate opportunity for its entire population. This would include the affordability of housing, the openness to informal innovation, the degree of social mixing, the ability to absorb new arrivals without displacing existing communities and the resilience embedded in local systems rather than large-scale infrastructure alone. We might ask how cities cultivate belonging, creativity, community stewardship, or how well they respond to climate and economic shocks in ways that include, rather than marginalize, vulnerable groups.
Such a framework would reward cities that thrive not through polish but through adaptability. Cities of the Global South—often dismissed in mainstream rankings—might instead excel. Places like Bogotá, with its culture of participatory urbanism, its transformation of mobility and public space, and its capacity for continuous reinvention, would rank highly. Medellín’s long-term social urbanism strategy, focused on equity and inclusion, would be central to a new understanding of quality. Nairobi, despite its well-documented challenges, might be recognized for its burgeoning tech ecosystem, dynamism and social resilience. Dakar’s vibrant street economy and community-based organization networks could become indicators of strength rather than symptoms of a lack of formal structure. Ho Chi Minh City, one of the most adaptive urban systems in Asia, could stand out for its agility and affordability. Even cities often overlooked in Western discourse—such as Tashkent, Addis Ababa, or Recife—could emerge as leaders for different reasons: creative recovery from crisis, community-grounded urban expansion or innovative forms of local governance.
In this model, the top tier of global cities might be defined not by their per-capita GDP or the comfort of their expatriate enclaves but by their social mobility, cultural vitality, and capacity for inclusive transformation. Instead of Zurich or Vienna occupying the pedestal year after year, we might see a top ten of cities whose reputations are tied not to perfection but to potential. Cities that embrace the complexities of urban life rather than eliminating them. Cities whose strengths emerge from negotiating multiplicity rather than suppressing it.
Ultimately, the problem with global city rankings is not that they compare cities, but that they imply a singular definition of what urban success looks like. In doing so, they inadvertently reinforce a homogenized, Western-centric vision of the good city. A more nuanced, plural and culturally sensitive approach would not only reorder the rankings; it would challenge us to rethink what we value in urban life itself. Instead of searching for the “best” city, we might instead recognize the powerful diversity of ways in which cities can support human flourishing.
