Methodology

World’s Best Cities Methodology

How we ranked the World’s Best Cities in 2024

Every year, Resonance analyzes 270+ global cities (principal cities of metropolitan areas with populations of more than one million) to determine the Top 100 by using a combination of core statistics and qualitative evaluations and recommendations by locals and visitors in digital channels such as Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook and Instagram.

While many factors shape our perception of cities as desirable places to live, work or visit, the Best Cities rankings focus on factors that demonstrate moderate to strong correlations with attracting talent, visitors and/or businesses to urban areas based on our extensive analysis of a wide range of data sources. While factors such as time to commute to work, crime or housing affordability do indeed shape our perception of cities when it comes to choosing a location to live within a city, our analysis shows that these factors have little to no relationship with the performance of an urban area overall when it comes to attracting talent, tourism or investment – at least not in the short term.

So what are the current factors influencing the performance of cities in attracting visitors, talent and/or companies? Based on our extensive analysis, it’s an eclectic mix that ranges from the number of Fortune 500 companies and airport connectivity, to the number of nightlife and outdoor recreation experiences, to the volume of check-ins on Facebook and mentions on Instagram. These factors can change and evolve over time, and we have continually updated our methodology to reflect these shifts. Case in point: we have added factors like Walk Score and Biking to this year’s index and removed inputs like Weather and Safety to more accurately represent the latest verified drivers of talent, investment and tourism to a city.

This year, we’ve regrouped our previous six categories (Place, Promotion, Product, Programming, People, Prosperity) into three larger pillars that we utilize in our work with clients—Livability, Lovability and Prosperity—to define each city’s relative Place Power® Score.