Methodology

World’s Best Cities Methodology

How we ranked the world’s best cities for 2025

In order to rank the performance and perception of the World’s Best Cities for 2025, Resonance analyzed the principal cities of metropolitan statistical areas with populations of more than 1,000,000 (according to the population sources we use, which span Demographia, Eurostat, the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey). We determined the Top 100 cities by using a combination of core statistics and user-generated data from online sources such as Google, Tripadvisor and Instagram to measure quality of place when it comes to experiential factors.

This blend of data led to the creation of Resonance’s proprietary Place Power^™ Score, the foundation of all of our Best Cities rankings.

So how does Resonance choose the metrics to effectively measure an urban region’s performance relative to its competitors?

While many factors shape our perception of urban regions as desirable places to live, work or visit, Resonance’s proprietary Place PowerTM Score rankings are focused on the shared factors that demonstrate moderate to strong correlations with the performance of urban regions when it comes to attracting prime age population (age 25–44), visitor expenditure and/or business formation.

Based on our ongoing analysis, these factors are an eclectic mix that ranges from the number of Fortune 500 companies and ease of airport connectivity to the number of nightlife and outdoor recreation experiences and the volume of check-ins on Facebook and mentions on Instagram. These factors can change and evolve over time, and so we’ve continually updated our methodology to reflect these shifts. Case in point: we’ve added factors like “Price-to-Income Ratio” (to track affordability) and Healthcare System Index (to measure a city’s concern for the well-being of residents) to this year’s index. And we’ve 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 and Prosperity) into three larger pillars that we utilize in our work with clients—Livability, Lovability and Prosperity—to define each city’s relative Place PowerTM Score.

As part of our new partnership with Ipsos we combined the performance data of the subcategories that comprise our overall Livability, Lovability and Prosperity indices with perception data reflecting the opinions and preferences of more than 22,000 respondents across 30 countries to understand the towns and cities where they would most like to live someday, where they would most like to visit, and where they believe they would find the best job opportunities.

This was accomplished with three open-ended questions where respondents could identify the towns and cities that they prefer. We asked them, when thinking about places across the globe, including small towns and large cities:

1. What are the Top 3 towns or cities you would most like to live in someday?
2. What are the Top 3 towns or cities you would most like to visit in the next 12 to 24 months?
3. What 3 towns or cities do you believe currently offer the best job opportunities?

This open-ended question methodology enabled us to capture the destinations that are top-of-mind to survey participants rather than restricting them to a predetermined list of cities.

The responses to these questions were aggregated and coded to benchmark the perception equivalent of our performance results, creating a true balance across our three overall indices of Lovability, Livability and Prosperity.

Note: All Russian cities continue to be omitted from our annual ranking. Resonance made this decision in 2022 after the country’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.