There is no doubt about United States being superpower because of multiple reasons. All countries lookup to U.S. but in current case it is not true. When talking about cities, Europe is the place to look upto! World need to learn from European cities, they have taken the top rank. Zurich made it to the top of sustainable cities index 2016 scoring 74.6%
The report is based on number of factors under three heads of people, planet and profit which further had various heads like demographic, education, education, income inequality, crime, health, pollution, energy, green spaces, waste management, transport infrastructure, tourism, employment and connectivity etc.
It’s interesting to note that major chunk of top 100 cities consist of European cities and many in top 20. Ranking of some very famous cities include:
San Francisco – 12
Abu Dhabi -13
Amsterdam – 16
Copenhagen – 17
Washington – 21
Boston – 22
Sydney – 35
Chicago – 45
Bangkok – 53
The last 10 potions were occupied by Nairobi, Kolkata, New Delhi, Chennai, Cairo, Amman, Bangalore. These cities are fast growing cities concentrated in China (6 cities) & India (5 cities). Bottom third of the list have Asian cities as main contributors. Quality of life, health, education and environmental concerns are now gaining importance in these cities.
“The rate of urbanization in the developing world is quite extreme,” said John Batten, Arcadis global cities director, “You look at China: buildings first, people second in terms of priorities of urbanization. Now you find cities in Asia that are sort of retroactively addressing air quality and water contamination.”
Long commute distance attributed to horizontal development, urban sprawls, high energy consumption and wastage prevented North American cities from occupying top positions.
Read about: City Branding, What makes a city Great!, Loss of walkable Cities, Stages of City Branding
