Basel’s name has become synonymous with global creativity, and that’s not without good reason. Here, solos sing out from the Jazzcampus, the Kunstmuseum Basel overflows with masterworks, and Art Basel – you think we’d forget? – steals the world’s attention year after year.
Yet, Basel is just as much builder as it is painter, and there’s a lot happening on the banks of the Rhine. The Dreispitz district, once warehouses, has been steadily transforming into schools, studios, and small businesses – the picture of a “cool” neighbourhood ascending. Then there’s VoltaNord, a district-in-progress that turns a former train yard into a low-traffic, greenspace-rich destination for visitors and residents pining to call it home. That is, after all, how a city with the best biking (and second-best walkability) in Europe would do it. In the meantime, locals savour the Basel that has drawn and kept people here for generations. With the third-best standard of living in our rankings, they’ll be happy to do it. Prosperity here is born not just from a healthy cultural sector, but also Europe’s Biovalley – a tri-nation life sciences cluster stretching from Basel into France and Germany. More than 800 life-sciences companies and many more research groups orbit the city, supported by renowned accelerators like DayOne and BaseLaunch.