Resonance Consultancy Reveals the World’s Best Cities for 2025

The global place branding advisor today announced the planet’s 100 top-performing cities in their 10th annual World's Best Cities Report, developed in partnership with Ipsos. London tops the ranking for a 10th year in a row, while 36 U.S. cities make the Top 100, the most of any country, with Canada a distant second with six cities.

LONDON, Nov. 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Resonance is a leading advisor in place strategy, place branding, and place marketing, and its annual World's Best Cities rankings quantify and benchmark the relative quality of place, reputation and competitive identity of the planet’s metropolitan areas with a metro population of 1M or more.

The Best Cities data is lauded as one of the world's most thorough annual city rankings, based on original methodology that analyzes both the performance and perception of cities around the world.

The 10th annual World’s Best Cities rankings—powered this year by a new partnership with Ipsos—is an important, timely analysis of the urban regions that are leading in the areas most important to attracting workforce, visitors and businesses.

Download the 2025 World's Best Cities Report and all 100 city profiles at WorldsBestCities.com.

Learn more about how Resonance Consultancy can help your city or community at ResonanceCo.com.

“Resonance once again analyzed the principal cities of global metropolitan areas with populations of more than 1M,” says Resonance President & CEO Chris Fair. “Our goal in producing these reports for a decade now is to create the most comprehensive and holistic approach to measuring and benchmarking both perception and performance of cities available.”

This year’s rankings are more revelatory than ever, powered by Resonance’s new partnership with Ipsos to incorporate perception-based data by surveying more than 22,000 people in 30 countries for the first time—the results of which also demonstrate that people all over the world still very much aspire to live, visit and work in the world’s largest cities. 

The overall World’s Best Cities rankings are determined by analyzing this public perception, combined with a wide range of factors that have demonstrated moderate to strong correlations with attracting prime age population (age 25 – 44), visitor expenditure, and/or business formation.

“The phrase ‘perception is reality’ is often used when developing reputation management strategies for companies, but the same holds true for destinations,” says Jason McGrath, Executive Vice President, Head of Corporate Reputation at Ipsos. “By merging the top-of-mind destinations where people tell us they want to live, work and visit with the rigorous evaluation of place that Resonance has been conducting for a decade, we have created a more comprehensive evaluation of cities and can better advise destinations on how to strengthen their reputation.”

Based on each city's perception and performance for livability, lovability, and prosperity, these are the World’s Top 10 Best Cities for 2025:

1. London, UK

2. New York, USA

3. Paris, France

4. Tokyo, Japan

5. Singapore

6. Rome, Italy

7. Madrid, Spain

8. Barcelona, Spain

9. Berlin, Germany

10. Sydney, Australia 

(The full ranking and extensive profiles of all 100 of the World’s Best Cities are available at WorldsBestCities.com.)

Dive deeper into the ranking with the free Secrets of the World’s Best Cities webinar on Dec. 10, 2024.

About Resonance Consultancy

Resonance creates transformative strategies, brands and campaigns that empower destinations, cities and communities to realize their full potential. As leading advisors in real estate, tourism and economic development, Resonance combines expertise in research, strategy, branding and communications to make destinations, cities and developments more valuable and more vibrant. ResonanceCo.com

About Ipsos

Ipsos is one of the largest market research and polling companies globally, operating in 90 markets and employing nearly 20,000 people. Our passionately curious research professionals, analysts and scientists have built unique multi-specialist capabilities that provide true understanding and powerful insights into the actions, opinions and motivations of citizens, consumers, patients, customers or employees. Our 75 business solutions are based on primary data from our surveys, social media monitoring, and qualitative or observational techniques. “Game Changers”—our tagline—summarizes our ambition to help our 5,000 clients navigate with confidence our rapidly changing world. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has been listed on the Euronext Paris since July 1, 1999. The company is part of the SBF 120 and Mid-60 indices and is eligible for the Deferred Settlement Service (SRD). ISIN code FR0000073298, Reuters ISOS.PA, Bloomberg IPS:FP www.ipsos.com

About World's Best Cities

Best Cities is the home of Resonance's exclusive ranking of the world's top urban regions. The data is used by leading news outlets, trusted by city leaders, and is widely considered to be the world's most comprehensive annual city ranking. Bloomberg calls it, ”The most comprehensive study of its kind; it identifies cities that are most desirable for locals, visitors, and businesspeople alike, rather than simply looking at livability or tourism appeal.” WorldsBestCities.com | #BestCities

Attachments

• 2025 World's Best Cities Ranking and Report
• 2025 World's Best Cities Ranking and Report