As we struggle to find ways to survive the current crisis and look at the leaders of the world to provide guidance, the latest Hub Culture 2009 Zeitgeist Ranking will come in handy as a tour of the cities that are better positioned to sustain an acceptable quality of life while providing plenty of opportunities to rebuild for the future. A zeitgeist reflecting the drama of our times:
Washington,DC
its not really about the Obamas – its about the context of our changing expectations of government
Berlin
Berliners become an enigma – povo at home, increasingly affluent abroad
Beijing
Just ignore the noxious skyline as you watch the GDP growth rates, still hovering near 9%
Los Angeles
LA’s fashion scene has stagnated, and the city’s hold on entertainment is slipping to diffusion by web 2.0
Tokyo
the principles of kaizen (continuous improvement) are shaping a really cool new Japanese ecovibe
Sydney
The general attitude down under appears to be one of distant concern
Saö Paulo
Here, ‘crunch’ is in the quinoa, not in the financial vocabulary
Hong Kong
The city is rich enough to sit out the bust, and it can always rely on China’s neighboring Guangdong province to drive the local economy
New York
Hunger breeds innovation, because people actually have to think, plot and [...]
Further to my last post on accelerating innovation, and after reading a post on Facebook users by country I thought a bit of research was pertinent. Based on my own survey using Facebook itself, here is a list of some of the cities with the highest percentage of facebook users:
Montreal – 35.2%
Sydney – 28.4%
Toronto – 24.7%
London – 22%
Hong Kong – 18.9%
New York – 17.4%
Singapore – 14.1%
I had to remove from the list other potential candidates where Facebook didn’t breakdown their user base by city; cities in northern Europe and South America among them. Any feedback or inquiries on other cities are welcome.
In January of 2007 I posted the globalization index, a partnership between Foreign Policy magazine and A.T. Kearney. At the time the report listed the most globalized countries, led by Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. A few weeks ago I decided to once again fine tune the editorial line of this blog by dedicating more time to cover urban issues and the role of cities in the shaping of our global culture. So finding the Foreign Policy’s 2008 Global Cities Index serves to reinforce the recent spirit of this blog.
The methodology to rank the cities includes 24 metrics in five dimensions:
The first is business activity: including the value of its capital markets, the number of Fortune Global 500 firms headquartered there, and the volume of the goods that pass through the city. The second dimension measures human capital, or how well the city acts as a magnet for diverse groups of people and talent. This includes the size of a city’s immigrant population, the number of international schools, and the percentage of residents with university degrees. The third dimension is information exchange—how well news and information is dispersed about and to the rest of [...]
Every year Stan Stalnaker and his team of global citizens gather their experiences around the world and summarize in this, their now famous Hub Culture’s Zeitgeist Ranking, the cities that for a variety of reasons seem to be at the center of the Universe. An elusive classification that doesn’t get impressed with economic power, flawless life-styles or centuries-old traditions, is mostly based on heuristics that related to the needs and desires of global citizens hoping from hub to hub networking their way into urban authorities. This is their veredict:
Los Angeles, United States
In some ways, the doom and gloom LA has experienced recently has presaged the general red alerts now being felt elsewhere – from environmental crisis to economic lapse, LA seems to have arrived in the shits just before everyone else.
Berlin, Germany
As the cutting edge vibe in London wanes, Berlin continues to draw the young and the restless, and its ties to a resurgent East (i.e. Moscow, Warsaw) are really showing dividends.
Mumbai, India
Even as Mumbai gridlock threatens to become a 24/7 state of affairs, India in general and Mumbai in particular continue their assault on the global consciousness. It’s hard to argue against Mumbai, especially with so many [...]
The Age from Australia has ranked the top Tech capitals of the world, based on a combination of factors such as cost and availability of broadband connectivity, wireless internet access, technology adoption, government support, education and technology culture.
SeoulSouth Korea
SingaporeSingapore
TokyoJapan
Hong KongChina
StockholmSweden
San Francisco & Silicon ValleyUnited States
TallinnEstonia
New YorkUnited States
BeijingChina
New Songdo CitySouth Korea
Wonder where your city ranks among these? Consider the following facts:
Broadband is available in four out of five Seoul households and costs just $40 a month for speeds up to 100Mbps. Nine out of 10 residents also have mobile phones. [...] Digital mobile TV broadcasting, or Digital Multimedia Broadcasting, was launched in South Korea in 2005 and nearly 2 million Koreans now use the service to watch TV on their phones while riding trains and buses.
Last December the Singapore Government said it would roll out free wireless broadband across the island and more than 400,000 Singaporeans already have registered for the service. The government also plans to deliver wired broadband speeds of up 1Gbps by 2012.
Japan had nearly 8 million fibre-to-the-home broadband subscribers in December 2006 and, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 75 per cent of Japanese residents enjoy [...]
