Global City Rankings + Place Identity
City78's Economic Recovery Accelerator
Ranking Methodology
City78 chose 51 large cities across the globe based on data availability and geographic diversity to build a COVID global city ranking index for the first and second quarters of 2020.
Cities were scored on a 0-100 scale, with 100 representing the most optimal performance and 0 the most suboptimal. The index consists of three subcategories: COVID Impact Score, Pre-COVID Economic Performance Score, and Projected 2020 GDP Score.
Each score was normalized on a 0-100 scale across indicators in each category, with the overall score for each city averaged across the subcategory scores.
The indicators that made up the COVID Impact Score were COVID cases/1000 people and COVID deaths/1000 people. Those that made up the Pre-COVID Economic Score were city-level GDP (PPP), employment growth rate, and GDP growth rate for 2018. Finally, the Projected 2020 GDP score was based on projected country-level GDP growth rates for 2020.
Scoring Example
To illustrate how cities were scored, one can see that Paris received an overall score of 51. This was based on poor performance in projected 2020 GDP, garnering only a score of 2, and scores of 87 and 63 in the other categories. This averaged to a score of 51 overall, ranking Paris 38th of the 51 cities scored.
Major Trends
Asian cities far outperform European cities
The top scoring 11 cities were located in Asia, with the top four cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou all being located in China. These high scores are based on high economic growth before the outbreak of COVID that is projected to persist through the pandemic when compared to the economic slowdown of many other cities. Additionally, Asian cities were among the first to flatten the curve of COVID cases and have continued to maintain low infection rates in the months succeeding the initial outbreak.
Conversely, European cities' early inability to contain large outbreaks have hamstrung economic growth prospects for many cities, and have created public health emergencies unseen in Asian cities. Italian and Spanish cities have been particularly hard hit based on early outbreaks that quickly grew beyond the capacity of public health systems in early April. Brussels also scores very low based on the city's uncharacteristically high COVID death rate.
Major Trends
Already struggling South American cities face more hurdles ahead
Many cities in South America were facing economic stagnation before the onset of COVID-19. Brazilian cities in particular have faced steep contractions. Sao Paulo recorded an employment growth rate of -2% and a GDP contraction rate of -6%. Rio de Janeiro similarly saw a -3% GDP growth rate and -1% employment growth rate in 2018. Brazil's leadership has made a concerted effort to prioritize economic freedoms despite the warnings of public health officials, but this does not appear to have boosted projected economic growth. In fact, Brazil's GDP is expected to contract by 8% in 2020.
Major Trends
Canada outperforms the United States in COVID Impact
The United States has thus far been the hardest hit country in terms of COVID health impact, with the most cases and deaths of any country. Despite the United States' high infection rates, its North American neighbor Canada has fared far better in both cases and deaths per thousand people. As was mentioned in the article below, this difference in COVID outcomes can be attributed to varied responses between the two countries. While "Canada’s response was contingent on political deference to scientists and widespread support of expert opinion," misinformation has been rampant in the United States. In fact, 23% of Americans believed that COVID was intentionally created in a lab, a theory that has been debunked by the medical community.
Data Limitations
There were very few aggregated sources of data across the global cities in the index and thus much of the data regarding COVID health impacts had to be individually sourced from the public health ministries of the countries each city was located. Due to these lack of aggregated data sources across countries, the number of indicators available was limited. Additionally, the 2020 GDP forecast, which acts as a proxy for each city’s expected economic performance moving forward, is at the country level rather than the city level. This metric ignores the intranational differences between metropolitan economies but suffices in suggesting important distinctions between the economic performance of cities in different countries.
Zoom and click to explore the Global Cities Post-COVID Rankings.